
-L. 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 



IN A 

FRENCH HOSPITAL 

Notes of a Nurse 

BY 

M. eydoux-dI:mians 

TRANSLATED BY 

BETTY YEOMANS 




LONDON 

T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD. 

ADELPHI TERRACE 



^'i>y 



Copyright, 1915, by Plon-Nourrit & Company 
Copyright, 1915, by Duffield & Company 

All rights reserved 






Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co., New York 



TO 
MY FIVE BROTHERS 

WOUNDED IN THE SERVICE OF 
FRANCE 



NOTE 

The only merit of these notes is their profound sin- 
cerity. They give only impressions of things actually 
seen and heard, reveal only the wonderful courage and 
devotion that exist to-day in a French provincial hos- 
pital. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Our Patients i 

Sister Gabrielle 8 

One Night 15 

From One to Another 20 

Our Orderlies 25 

When They Talk 30 

How They Love in War Time .... 36 

Their Pride 38 

The Death of a Soldier 40 

The Funeral 46 

A Just Reflection 49 

A Simple Story 51 

Comrades 53 

Engaged 60 

Seen at the Railway Station .... 67 

A First Communion 71 

Conversation As It Is To-day .... 74 

A Soldier's Compliment and Song ... 78 

Always Suffering 83 

Young Recruits and Territorials ... 84 
iz 



X CONTENTS 

PAOB 

Under Martial Law * . 87 

Our Priests 88 

The Little Frenchmen 91 

What We Receive from the Front . . 92 
Correspondence in War Time .... 93 

A Little Refugee loi 

A Modest Little Soldier 106 

Officers and Men 109 

Sister Gabrielle's Office 112 

The Company of the Audacious . . .114 

Memories 118 

News from the Mechins 139 

A Lament 142 

Some Letters 143 

Sister Gabrielle's Christmas Tree . . .159 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

OUR PATIENTS 

On October sixth, last, I received a mes- 
sage from the directress of the Hospital of 
Saint Dominic, reading as follows: 

"A large number of wounded have just 
arrived. We can't take care of any more 
ourselves, and the moment has come to call 
for volunteers. I shall expect your help." 

One hour later, as you can easily imagine, 
I was at Saint Dominic. This specially 
privileged hospital is under the gentle man- 
agement of the Sisters of St. Vincent de 
Paul. Several years ago some of its de- 
voted trustees made one effort after another 
on its behalf in Paris, and, after overcoming 
many difficulties, reestablished the Sisters of 
Charity amongst us once again. They had 
not a doubt even then that they were work- 



2 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

ing in the interests of France's soldiers, those 
same soldiers whose faces light up now with 
such a special joy when they lie on their 
painful stretchers, and catch sight, near the 
large entrance porch, of the good white cor- 
nettes of the Sisters waiting for them. 

With my heart beating fast I entered the 
room to which I had been assigned. There 
they all were before me, these lads that had 
undergone that terrible and fierce adventur- 
ing into war. I remember how they went 
away in our wonderful mobilisation trains, 
those make-shift, flower-bedecked trains that 
sped all of them to the same destination, the 
same region of glory and bloodshed. One 
long war cry seemed to rise up from them 
over all our land. Our young soldiers who 
went away in them had acquired an en- 
tirely new way of shouting "Vive la 
France." It was no longer as if they were 
on parade, notwithstanding all the flowers 
that people tossed to them: it was already 
the cry of men who were to lead in war's 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 3 

assaults, and make the supreme sacrifice of 
their lives. I remember one little infantry- 
man of twenty years, standing erect with 
folded arms in the back of his compartment, 
his eyes flashing, and all the muscles of his 
pale face taut. He kept repeating threat- 
eningly, "Vive la France — ^vive la France," 
without a look toward any one; saying it just 
to himself and for his country. And I felt 
that it was as if he said: "We shall get 
them: we must get them, no matter what it 
costs. As for me, well, you see, to begin 
with, my life doesn't count any more." 
This very fellow is the one, perhaps, who 
has come back now and sleeps here in this 
first cot, where a face both energetic and in- 
fantile shows in the midst of the blood- 
stained linen. 

Sister Gabrielle made a tour with me of 
all the patients. The memory of certain of 
them particularly is fixed in my mind. 
There is number 3, here, who got a bullet 
wound in the region of the liver, and has 



4 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

to lie absolutely still, lest an internal hemor- 
rhage may occur at any moment. A war- 
rior of twenty-three he is, with cheeks as 
rosy as a girl's, and clear blue eyes. He 
fought like a lion, they say, but here noth- 
ing could be gentler. His appreciation for 
the least thing that is done for him is touch- 
ing. Number 8, little eight, as they call 
him, a volunteer, who seems about fifteen, 
and who has to live week after week propped 
on his right side, on a hard hospital bed, on 
account of an abscess following his wound. 
Number 12, an infantr3mQan, who got a bul- 
let in the left temple; it was extracted from 
his right maxillary, and in passing cut his 
tongue in two. "Everything has been put 
back," said the Sister, "but he can't talk 
yet, and he'll have to learn to talk all over 
again, like a little child. In taking care of 
him you must come every once in a while 
and see if you can guess what he wants." 
Number 17, a brave among the braves, who, 
under the enemy's fire, crawled ten kilo- 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 5 

metres on his hands and knees, dragging his 
twice wounded foot behind him, to deliver 
an order that he had been charged with. His 
wounds cause him cruel suffering, and yet 
he seems illuminated as with some strange 
inward joy. Number 24, nicknamed the 
little sieve, because of his fifteen wounds. 
Number 32, who suffers like a real martyr. 
His leg was literally shattered by the frag- 
ments of a shell. It was a question whether 
it could be saved at all, but following the 
directions of the war surgeon, we are keep- 
ing up the attempt. Antiseptic injections 
are made twice a day as deep as the bone. 
Number 30, who has lost an eye and has 
two open fractures in his right arm. When 
I said to him : "You have given a good deal 
for France," he answered, "It's the least I 
could do." And he added, laughing, "I was 
so clumsy with my hands. This will teach 
me to be clever even with my left one." 

Eloquent pens write every day of the hero- 
ism shown by our wounded soldiers, but 



6 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

shall we ever grow tired of hearing this 
ever recurring leit motifs which in everything 
that touches on the tragic developments of 
1914, sounds its incomparable song in praise 
of the moral qualities of France? One can- 
not repeat too often or too admiringly, "Our 
wounded." Our wounded, that is to say, 
those men who have come back from that 
hell, "whose horrors," they say themselves, 
"are indescribable" ; those who have marched 
beneath "that terrible, moving curtain of 
iron," to which an officer compared the mass 
of balls and shells in battle, a mass so com- 
pact that it obscured the very daylight on 
the firing line. Our wounded I Those, in 
a word, who have brought back in their very 
flesh the frightful scars of the enemy's iron, 
those who have cemented with their own 
blood the human wall that is now our 
frontier. They have come back, not with 
their courage drained, broken down, horror- 
stricken, stunned — not at all. They forget 
themselves to talk smilingly of the great 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 7 

hope in which we all share. They are 
touched, deeply touched, by the few hours 
of fatigue we undergo for them each day — 
for them who have given almost their lives. 

My tasks were laid out for me, and I be- 
gan work at once, thanked by the soldiers 
almost in advance for my trouble. 

"It's a bit too much to see you work like 
this for us." 

"All the same, no one has ever been served 
like this." 

They are not a bit difficult, but pleased 
with everything, these men who suffer so 
much, who have such a right to every care. 
Alas, there are too many of them (this hos- 
pital alone has as many as a thousand) to 
permit of all the little comforting things that 
we should like to do for them without stint. 
The Sister who cooks is sorely driven, and 
even the prescribed dishes that she sends up 
for the sickest ones are often far from appe- 
tising. For instance, I have just taken Num- 
ber 13, who is consumed by a lingering 



8 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

fever (a bullet passed through his lung), a 
milk soup that smelt badly burned, and in 
which pieces of half-cooked rice floated 
round. I sighed a little about it as I put 
the napkin on the bed. Did he understand 
what worried me? In any case, he shows no 
distaste, and a quarter of an hour later, when 
I pass by him, he motions to me, and says 
gently, "It was delicious, madame." 

That's the way they all are — all of them. 

SISTER GABRIELLE 

I STUDY with emotion the admirable vi- 
sion of the human soul which the Sister of 
Charity and the wounded soldier set before 
me. It is a vision which has intervened al- 
ways, as with an element of the supernatural, 
in our war-time pictures, and, behold, now 
we find it again, almost miraculously, in the 
supreme struggle of 1914. 

Sister Gabrielle, who has charge of my 
room, her identity quite hidden as it is by 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL Q 

her archangel's name, is the daughter of a 
general, as I know. She has three brothers 
that have served beneath the colours. The 
oldest, a quite young captain, has just met 
his death on the field of honour. I happen 
to have learned the circumstances : how, cov- 
ered with blood already flowing from three 
different wounds. Captain X nevertheless 
struggled on bravely at the head of his men, 
and after several hours of conflict was struck 
by a bullet full in the breast. He fell, cry- 
ing: "Don't fall back! That's my last 
order !" 

Sister Gabrielle was told only last week 
of the glorious grief that had been thrust 
upon her, but no one around her would have 
guessed her sorrow. Possibly her smile for 
the patients that day was a little more com- 
passionate and tender than usual, when she 
thought of her brother enduring his moment 
of supreme agony alone down there in the 
forests of the Vosges. But no matter how 
compassionate Sister Gabrielle may be, she 



10 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

never carries it to the point of feebleness or 
softness. Her bearing with the soldiers is 
an indefinable mingling of something an- 
gelic, maternal and virile, all at once. These 
men brought in from all points of the im- 
mense and terrible battlefield become at once 
her children (and never was a mother more 
watchfully solicitous and devoted), but 
never does she forget their sacred title of 
soldier. She must not stir up their feelings, 
she knows. She sets herself, on the con- 
trary, the essential, secret task of keeping up 
their moral strength, of helping them, after 
the enemy's fire, to meet the ordeal of the 
operating room, the wearing suffering, per- 
haps at last even death; for death is always 
watching for its prey in this room of the 
twenty-four beds reserved for the most se- 
verely wounded. 

Sister Gabrielle would like to save them 
all. What a task ! What a struggle ! She 
is on her feet night and day. The orderlies 
are told to call her at the least disturbing 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 11 

symptom, and when they do, with true 
motherly enthusiasm, she who is always 
helping others to bear their heavy burdens, 
herself awakens, tireless, to her own sad 
duties. In the semi-darkness of the room 
she prepares hastily the serum that may pro- 
long a life; she utters the sweet words that 
are dear to souls who suffer thus at 
night. It may be one o'clock, two o'clock 
in the morning, but when four o'clock sounds 
her night is over. Lost in the long line of 
white cornettes, she takes her way to the 
chapel, and there stores up for another twen- 
ty-four hours the strength to go on with this 
superhuman mode of living. Behold in her 
"a soul that is truly the mistress of the body 
which it animates." 

She is thin and frail — ^mortally ill herself, 
they say; she was quite ill one month ago. 
But if you speak to her of her health she 
interrupts you a little impatiently: 

"We have given ourselves, body and soul, 
according to our vows. To last a little 



12 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

longer or a little less doesn't matter. The 
main thing is to fulfil our tasks. Besides," 
she adds, indicating her patients, "they have 
given their lives for France. It is quite 
right, if it must be so, that our lives be sacri- 
ficed to save them." 

And, in truth, from living in this atmos- 
phere one comes to think this mutual hero- 
ism the natural thing. These two kinds of 
heroes, the French soldier and the Sister of 
Charity, need make no explanations, coin no 
phrases to understand each other. There 
really exists between them, over and above 
the differences in class and lives, a real and 
touching intimacy of the soul. When Sister 
Gabrielle goes quietly and rapidly past the 
long rows of beds where they suffer so un- 
complainingly, they know perfectly well 
that she hasn't time to stop before each one 
of them. She has not time to say the words 
which suffering seems so easily to call forth, 
but which may make it worse and cause it 
to be less nobly borne. They know, too, 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I3 

that she will be there if her presence is nec- 
essary, and that if, in secret, her woman's 
heart weeps over them, weeps incessantly, in 
their presence her French woman's heart 
beats with pride. 

To us, when they can't hear, she talks 
about "her children" freely, quite full of 
admiration and pity for them: 

"Ah, if you knew how full of courage 
they are," she says. "You must be with 
them night and day, like me, to do them 
justice; to see them coming into the operat- 
ing room so bravely, a smile on their lips, as 
they lie on their stretchers. You must see 
them die, too." 

Sister Gabrielle's eyes filled with tears at 
the thought of so many young lives that 
have gone out — of so many yet to pass out, 
in her arms. This woman, young and frail 
as she is, truly must have some supernatural 
source of energy in herself, thus to bear up 
and never falter under the terrible weight of 
suffering that crushes her silent heart, this 



14 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

suffering that tortures her soldiers in the 
flesh incessantly all about her. 

The wounded soldiers are not clever at 
expressing their appreciation. But they 
know quite well that Sister Gabrielle can 
guess what they feel for her, just from the 
timid way in which they say, "Thank you," 
so many times, or the confiding way in which 
they give her their letters, or tell the news 
they've had from their families, or from the 
fervour with which they try to do a thousand 
little services for her as soon as they begin 
to get better; and especially from the respect, 
a very touching kind of respect, surprisingly 
full of delicacy, which they invariably show 
for her, even in the midst of their cruellest 
suffering. 

In speaking to Sister Gabrielle they never 
use the trite phrases that they use to the 
other nurses, such as, "You'll tire yourself 
out; you're doing too much." 

No, Sister Gabrielle is an immaterial 
being, to whom they don't dare attribute the 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 1^ 

common feebleness of humanity. But 
watching her passing by, her clear eyes 
deeply ringed with fatigue, her step tired, 
but her bearing invariably gentle, I often 
hear them murmur, "She deserves a decora- 
tion." 

ONE NIGHT 

Better than all the newspapers and of- 
ficial communications on the war, the hos- 
pital keeps one in touch with matters at the 
front. In the lot of wounded that were sent 
in yesterday, forty came to Sister Gabrielle 
directly from the Aisne. They arrived to- 
ward the close of the day, and I shall never 
forget the spectacle of that room. One 
stretcher succeeded another, all borne slowly 
by the litter-men and set down near the hast- 
ily prepared beds. Here and there you 
caught a cry of pain that could not be kept 
in, though there were no complaints, no con- 
tinued groanings. Yet now, when you lean 
over those glorious and lamentable blue bon- 



i6 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 



nets, cut as they are by bullets and stained 
with the mud of the trenches, when you take 
off the caps that have grown stiff with the 
dampness of the long rains, you perceive 
their suffering by the glittering look in their 
fevered eyes, their poor, worn faces and 
ravaged features, sunken and hollow with 
suffering. Then, all at once, at the least 
word, the old gallantry that we know so well 
reasserts itself. For example, they ask the 
most touching and childish favours of us. 
Thus if a limb that hurts too much must be 
lifted, or a piece of clothing that binds a 
wound eased up, they all ask: 

"Not the orderly, not the orderly, please; 
the Sister or the lady." 

One must have given in little enough to 
suffering, have treated oneself rather roughly, 
after all, not to deserve now the gentle min- 
istrations of women's hands. And certainly 
it is the least of our duties to be here and 
ready with this gentleness, as long as there 
is one wounded soldier left to look after, the 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I7 

least of our duties to serve them till the 
final hush of victory descends at last on 
our terrible battlefields. 

The first words that the newcomers ex- 
change with their cot neighbours are not 
about their own hardships; they speak first, 
and before anything else, of France. 

"How are things going down there?" 

"All right. We'll get them." 

Then the newcomers, worn out as they are, 
sink into feverish sleep, struggling some- 
times for days between realities and the per- 
sistent nightmare of the visions that pursue 
them. That night in the room that was al- 
ways so still, but that now seemed more 
feverish than usual, I heard a sound of 
smothered sobs. It was Number 25, a big, 
good-looking soldier, whom each day I had 
seen having his wound dressed, a real torture, 
without a word, and who was sobbing now 
with his head in his pillow, ashamed of his 
tears, but powerless to keep them back. I 
went to him and tried to question him, but 



l8 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

the soldiers don't readily speak to you of 
the sorrows that touch their hearts the deep- 
est and most nearly. 

"Thank you, lady; don't bother yourself 
about me. I don't need anything." 

*'Is your pain worse, maybe?" 

"I'm in pain, yes, terribly, but it isn't 
that." 

"What is it, then? Won't you tell me?" 

He denied me still, then, all at once, un- 
der the pressure of his grief, he said: 

"Oh, yes, I do feel like confiding in you. 
I'll tell you what it is. The comrade who 
was waiting next to me till his bed was 
ready brought me news of the death of my 
best friend. He was in his regiment and 
was killed by his side. Oh, madame, he was 
such a fine fellow, so devoted and full of 
courage. We were brought up together. He 
was more than my chum; he was my friend." 

He cried and cried. He had borne every- 
thing without giving way — the continual 
nearness of death, the so hard life in the 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL IQ 

trenches, the incessant physical suffering; 
but the death of his friend crushed him and 
brought him down to earth. And while I 
murmured words that, alas, were futile for 
any change they made in his sorrow, but 
which did some good, just the same, I heard 
him sobbing in his pillow : 

"My friend was killed. My friend was 
killed." 

His friend — when one knows what the 
word comrade means to them, one divines all 
that word friend may mean, too. 

Sister Gabrielle, whose infallible instinct 
brings her alway to the cots where the sickest 
of her children are, passed near Number 25 
and stopped a moment. She did not ask him 
anything. She just put her hand caressingly 
on his brown head, so young and virile, and 
said in her firm, sweet voice : 

"All right, my boy, all right. Courage. 
Remember all this is for France." 

Then turning to me, she said : 

"Before night-time wouldn't you like to 



20 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

play a game of dominoes with this good boy*? 
He'll represent the French forces, and in the 
morning he must be able to tell me that he 
has won." 

In the midst of his tears the young sol- 
dier, his heart swelling in his distress, smiled 
at finding himself thus treated like a child. 
They have such need of it, the soldiers, after 
having done so valiantly the work of men! 

FROM ONE TO ANOTHER 

It is comforting to hear them talk about 
their superior officers, as a soldier of the 
149th Infantry has just talked to me about 
his captain. 

"Oh, I can tell you, my captain had plenty 
of good blood in his veins. There was noth- 
ing suspicious about him. I saw him stand- 
ing straight up among the whistling bullets, 
giving his orders without flinching, without 
recoiling one inch, as if he were sitting at his 
desk and only flies were buzzing round his 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 21 

head. And so gentle, too. Good to the men 
and always jolly. We were in luck to have 
him over us." 

I asked him questions about his campaign, 
and he talked freely, having only good things 
to tell. The taciturn ones are those who 
have sad memories to conceal. 

"We were the ones told off to take the vil- 
lage of S ," he said, "where the enemy 

was. My captain, who acted as chief of 
battalion, got us all together, and said to 
us: 

" 'There seem to be two or three Boches 
down there. We must get them out, eh"?' 

"Everybody knew very well what that 
meant, but we laughed and went to it in 
good part. What fights those were! Two 
days of bloody battles in the streets. Fin- 
ally the village was ours. We had one 
night's rest in a farmhouse, three-quarters of 
which had been destroyed. When we got 
there we spied an unfortunate porker in a 
corner. He had taken refuge there, fright- 



22 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

ened by the firing. He came in very handy, 
I can tell you, for our stomachs were 
hollow. 

" 'Charge again on that Boche, there,' said 
the Captain. When we had eaten and slept 
and assembled again next day, he said: 

" 'Well, well, my lads, we're in danger of 
getting too soft here. Suppose we go on a 
little further and see what's happening.' 

"We marched on further, but the enemy, 
who were in force, began to shoot at us all 
at once from below. My Captain didn't ex- 
pose us needlessly. He made us lie down 
in the deserted trenches. There were corpses 
there and dead horses, and water, water 
everywhere. It rained without stopping. 
We spent the night up to our waists in 
water. It was enough to make one laugh." 

To laugh — this word turns up all the time 
in their recitals, and in the most unexpected 
manner. Oh, this French courage, which 
faces not only the bitter struggle with dan- 
ger, but disdains and mocks it, too; that ele- 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 23 

gant courage of our fathers that has been 
born again amongst us. 

My foot-soldier, Number 149, was seized 
with quite a touching emotion when I told 
him that I knew his Captain's lady. 

"Tell her she may be proud," he said, 
"and that I'd willingly go back down there; 
for my country's sake, of course, but also 
and a good deal, on my Captain's account." 

Then I let him know something that I'd 
kept till the end of our interview, that his 
Captain, young as he was, had just been pro- 
moted to the rank of battalion chief; that 
the Cross of the Legion of Honour had been 
given him, and that, thanks to him, no doubt, 
the entire regiment had been mentioned in 
the order of the day. I won't attempt to 
picture the little soldier's moving and disin- 
terested joy. 

Near Number 3's bed I caught sight of a 
peasant woman from the Cher, in a white 
headdress, and an old man, who wore a me- 
dallion of 1870 on his breast. 



24 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

"They are his parents," Sister Gabrielle 
explained to me. "I had word sent to them. 
The poor lad is in grave danger. Luckily 
I've got the management's permission to let 
the mother pass the nights here." 

In this way I became acquainted with the 
Mechins, French peasants of the old order, 
unalterably attached to the soil. They hope, 
nay, they are sure, that their son is going to 
get well. The sick man says nothing. 
They're all like that, our soldiers — ^no fool- 
ish tenderness, no pain given to their par- 
ents. Who knows, besides, how much their 
desire to live may have dwindled down after 
their tragic voyages to the frontier"? The 
soul must possess new powers of detachment 
when it has risen to the heights of absolute 
self-sacrifice. The little soldier does not de- 
ceive himself, Sister Gabrielle has told me, 
and when I expressed my admiration for the 
strange moral force that he gave proof of, 
she answered me proudly : 

"But they are all like that." 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 2^ 

Just as I was going to leave the room the 
sick man summoned me with his eyes. I 
went up to him and bent over him. 

"Do you want anything?" I asked. 

He made a sign of No, and with a great 
effort raised his hand outside the bed 
and reached it toward me, murmuring: 
"Thanks." 

I understood. It was his good-bye. He 
thought that he should perhaps not be there 
in the morning when I came back. 

OUR ORDERLIES 

The corps of orderlies is not always sym- 
pathetic. I must say, however, that in the 
room where I am employed, each one does 
his duty, thanks, no doubt, to the active su- 
pervision of the Sister, thanks also perhaps 
to three singularly moving personalities 
among the orderlies themselves. 

To begin with, there is Nicolas Indjema- 
toured, twenty-two, a Greek, and a subject 
of the Ottoman empire. He held a highly 



26 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

lucrative position, of which he was very 
proud, in a bank at Constantinople, but when 
the war broke out, he could not bear the 
thought of being drawn into service with the 
Germans against France, and did not hesi- 
tate to give up his job. He would not even 
see his old mother again, but made a will 
providing for her with all his small store 
of property, and sailed away as a stowaway 
on a steamer which landed him at Marseilles. 
He enlisted as a volunteer in the Legion and 
was ordered here, where, however, soon after 
his arrival, he received a serious finger 
wound, and was sent to St. Dominic to be 
cured. He explained his state of mind to 
me with simplicity and emotion: 

"You can understand, madame, how 
ashamed I am, among all these brave men, 
not to have done anything yet for France. 
Luckily I can help Sister in serving them. 
It's a great honour for me." 

In the hospital room they all call him 
"the little Greek." Night and day he holds 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL T] 

himself in readiness to do things for the in- 
valids, whom he treats with touching con- 
sideration, refusing doggedly to accept the 
least remuneration from the management. 

Boisset, a stubby little orderly of some 
sixty years, is an old employee of the hos- 
pital. An ex-pastry cook with no family, 
he was operated on and cared for at the 
hospital ten years ago. His case is one of 
those mysterious stories of conversion that 
work themselves out in secret near this cross- 
shaped chapel, with its four great doors wide 
open on the wards of suffering. 

Boisset, once cured, begged permission not 
to leave the hospital, "hoping," as he said, 
"to consecrate my life to God in the service 
of the poor wounded." 

Do not his words recall those of the broth- 
ers of St. Francis*? Like them, Boisset has 
summed up his whole life in these two words : 
simplicity and heroism. He is at others' 
service night and day, just as he desired to 
be. The Sister calls him "her right arm," 



28 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

something at which he only half shows his 
pride. He is the one that's called upon, with 
never any fear of putting him out, if there's 
anything to be done in the way of lifting 
some fellow on whom a specially delicate 
operation has been performed, or doing some 
other difficult bit of duty. "Boiss'et, Bois- 
set!" You get accustomed to hearing his 
name called out each moment. And Boisset, 
untiring, runs from one bed to the other, 
with his mincing, weary step, incessantly. 
In his moments of leisure he harks back to his 
old trade, begging from the kitchen some 
left-over bits of milk and whites of eggs, 
with which he cooks up some sweet dishes 
for his beloved patients, by whom they are 
much appreciated. What strikes me espe- 
cially in Boisset is his joyful spirit. This 
man, who deliberately leads the hardest kind 
of life, has a smile always on his lips, and 
cheerfulness always in his heart. In the 
little recess where he does the patients' dishes 
you can hear him humming the canticles, es- 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 29 

pecially the magnificat, of which he is very 
fond, as he confided to me, because it's the 
song of joy. When I find myself with Bois- 
set I always want to talk to him about 
"Dame Poverty" and "Charity, her hand- 
maiden." 

Our third orderly, the Marquess of X, be- 
longs to one of the greatest Italian families. 
His mother was a French woman, and from 
the very beginning of hostilities, "he felt," 
as he put it, "the French blood boiling in his 
veins." 

He found a simple and admirable way of 
doing something for his mother's country ac- 
cordingly, by coming and putting himself at 
the services of the wounded. He wanted "to 
perform the humblest duties," he particu- 
larly specified. He did each day, from 
morning till night, very humble and some- 
times repulsive duties, without apparently 
recoiling from them. He is but one in the 
nameless crowd of orderlies, yet the patients 
very easily distinguish him from the others, 



30 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

and the consolation and care that he gives 
them are specially sweet to them, because it 
includes the admiration of a noble soul and 
of a whole race for the French soldier. 

The day he arrived, the Marquess of X, 
after making a tour of the wounded, came 
up to me with tears in his eyes. 

"What extraordinary reserves of energy 
and heroism the French still have," he re- 
marked to me, much moved. "To hear these 
young fellows tell of the dangers they've 
gone through, talking about sufferings, not 
only without complaining of them, but 
laughing about them, is 'the finest part of it 
all: " 

WHEN THEY TALK 

Sister Gabrielle accosted me this morn- 
ing with a luminous smile : 

"We shall certainly save Number 32's 
leg. The work of disinfection is finished. 
The flesh begins to form again over the 
wound." 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 3I 

She is radiant. Such are her joys, the 
only ones she asks of life. Nothing else ex- 
ists, or ever will exist for her, and yet her 
face is still young. Let us incline our heads 
before such lives as hers I In a flash I un- 
derstand whence comes the deep-seated af- 
finity of soul that rules between Sister Ga- 
brielle and our soldiers ; she has given as they 
have given, everything, even themselves. 
Only in her case, it is for always and under 
all circumstances. I ask her what she thinks 
of Number 3, who seems to me to be picking 
up a bit. She shakes her head sadly. 

"His parents are full of illusions about 
him, but we can only prolong things for him, 
with all our care." 

Sad, oh, how sad ! A little later Mother 
Mechin comes and talks to me in a low 
voice about her son. 

"Such a good boy, madame! He never 
gave us one hour of trouble. He fought so 
well, they say, and at home he was as gentle 
as a girl. And he didn't drink or waste his 



32 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

money. Just imagine, he has saved up a 
thousand francs, in little pieces, since he was 
a child. We didn't want him to cut into 
this money to go to the wars. We preferred 
to go without things ourselves to fit him out, 
and let him keep his little savings. He will 
be very glad of it when he gets married." 
Married ! Alas, poor boy I A terrible spouse 
is waiting for him, one who will not give 
him up. But already he has marched before 
her with as much courage as now perhaps he 
guesses at her coming near. He is very 
feeble, but he makes a sign that he would 
like to speak to me. I bend over his bed, 
and he whispers in my ear: 

"I took communion this morning: I am 
very glad." 

I had just brought him a medal of the 
Holy Virgin. He smiled with pleasure, and 
I am moved to the bottom of my soul, see- 
ing him kiss the medal and then place it on 
his heart. 

All this time we are making the acquaint- 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 33 

ance of newer patients, as they are always 
coming into this ward, which is reserved for 
those that have undergone the most serious 
operations. "One never has the consolation 
of seeing them completely cured," Sister 
Gabrielle warned me with a sigh. I stop a 
moment before a little Turco, who took part 
in the battle of the Aisne. Both his legs are 
broken. His face stiffens with pain, and 
now and then a groan escapes him, though it 
is at once suppressed. He scolds himself 
about it, and warns himself, or calls me to 
witness, I am not sure which, when I hear 
him murmuring: 

"Just look ! When you think of the ones 
who stayed down there, ought you ever to 
groan"? We are happier here. It isn't 
right." 

Those who stayed down there! The im- 
agination recoils before the picture evoked 
by those simple words; those who stay be- 
hind down there in the cold and the night, 
under constant menace by the barbarian 



34 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

enemy, who stay to suffer agonies alone, to 
die; to see their blood, without the help even 
of a single bandage, flow from their broken 
flesh and fall to the last drop upon the soil 
of France. I remember the words of an- 
other wounded soldier: 

"After the battle, that day, you couldn't 
hear yourselves talk any more in the trenches 
for the cries of the wounded. It was like 
one great uninterrupted wail. You could 
make out appeals, prayers, calls for help, 
women's names. Then, little by little, si- 
lence came again, as a good many of them 
died. What we heard sound longest on the 
battlefield, from one end to the other, was 
the word 'Mother!' It is always those who 
are dying who call like that; we know that 
well now." 

Alas I What do we not know now of the 
many-sided anguish and horror of death! 
We must certainly begin, like the little 
Turco, to qualify as lucky the fellows whom 
destiny delivers up to the hospital. And yet 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 35 

how they suffer, even these. To physical tor- 
ture is added too often the worst tortures of 
the spirit. 

"In the two months I've been away, not 
one bit of news of my family has reached 
me," a soldier told me, "except a despatch 
announcing my father's death." 

Another had lost a fifteen-year-old son, 
whom he adored, two hours before his de- 
parture. 

"His body was still warm: my wife was as 
if mad with sorrow." 

They tell you these things without com- 
plaint. France called them: it was quite 
natural to answer h^r, to go to her out of 
the midst of the greatest sorrows, the deepest 
affections, the keenest happiness; sometimes, 
like that young engineer there of twenty, 
married eleven months ago to a girl of eigh- 
teen, to tear yourself away from a whole ro- 
mance! He had been rejected for defective 
vision, but, and his wife agreed, he decided 
this did not matter any more, now that 



36 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

mobilisation was under way, and that he 
must go. Two days after the birth of a fine 
boy — a future soldier, the mother said — he 
left his life of ease and tenderness and re- 
ported at the barracks as a simple soldier; 
and he had been encouraged to do so by that 
little Parisienne whom we should have 
thought absorbed in nothing but society and 
dress. 

HOW THEY LOVE IN WAR TIME 

You curse this frightful war with all the 
instincts of your humanity, and yet, ten 
times a day, nay, twenty, you cannot help 
admiring the marvellous moral effects it pro- 
duces. 

"War is the scourge of God," the Scrip- 
ture tells us. Indeed the scourge must come 
even from God, its sufferings raise men's 
souls to such heights, souls that otherwise 
would have vegetated always in the 
mediocrity of their personal interests and 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 37 

narrow points of view or vulgar pas- 
sions. It is the moral level of the whole na- 
tion which rises, and has risen steadily, for 
three months. 

This morning I heard a soldier of twenty- 
five, both his arms broken, ask an orderly 
to whom he might dictate some letters. 

"To the lady who comes each evening and 
makes the rounds for the letter writers. My 
poor old fellow, you'll have to send yours 
that way, too." 

"Very good, what difference does that 
make to me^" 

"Well, well," says the orderly with a sly 
look, "that depends on whom you're writing 
to." 

The other shrugged his shoulders with a 
movement of supreme disdain: 

"Any other time I wouldn't say anything, 
but at present, you see, it's different. In 
times of war, one thinks of one's mother, and 
that's all." 

Oh, dolorous but holy times of war, which 



38 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

purify our youth, which summon up again 
all our effective faculties, passing them 
through a new crucible, from which they 
come out purified and nobly set ! Each one 
of us, it seems to me, could enumerate a 
certain number of acts and preoccupations in 
his secret life that "don't exist any more in 
times of war," if only, at the very least, be- 
cause they were tinctured with futility or 
unconscious egotism. 

THEIR PRIDE 

One doesn't enough realise how little our 
soldiers ask for, and what pride they have. 
I have learned it through my own experience. 
At my first appearance some of them gave 
me little commissions to do for them. 
"Would you bring me a package of tobacco, 
a tablet of chocolate'?" Quickly they 
searched for their purses under their pillows; 
but I naturally refused to take the money 
— refused also to let them pay me back. 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 39 

When this way of doing things became 
known in the room the remedy was very 
simple. They didn't ask me any more for 
things. In vain I offered my services. I 
succeeded only in getting refusals. 

"Thank you very much, madame," they 
would say; "we don't need anything." And 
I used to see them, when they thought I 
wasn't looking, giving their orders to those 
male nurses who were the least under sus- 
picion of generosity. I had to mend my 
ways and promise to let myself be reim- 
bursed henceforth, even though I made a few 
little presents on my own account. 

The wounded who had been stripped by 
the Prussians on the battlefield and had 
nothing left — nothing, not even a handker- 
chief, not even two sous to buy a cigar with 
— went without everything, stoically, rather 
than express the least desire. They know 
perfectly well that their requests would be 
attended to in a hurry, but they know, too, 
that people's needs are immense, and they 



40 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

think of others: always this school of war! 
I saw one of them once who started to get 
up and then sat there for hours without 
budging, his feet kept stubbornly under the 
bed. I learned finally from his neighbour 
that he would willingly have walked off, but 
that he hadn't any slippers, and didn't want 
to go about in his bare feet, because people 
would have given him a pair at once. 

"Well, why didn't you say so?" I asked 
him, as I brought him some slippers. 

"Oh, well, madame, we know there are 
so many other comrades who need them, 
too." 

They want to have things given to all or 
none. We have only to obey them and 
work, work for France. 

THE DEATH OF A SOLDIER 

The little soldier Mechin had a serious 
hemorrhage in the night; he was in the op- 
erating room when I arrived at the hospital 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 4I 

this morning. The Sister had sent his par- 
ents to pray in the chapel, they explained to 
me. The work of attending to the sick went 
on as usual ; nothing must be allowed to stop 
the movement of the wheels. Toward ten 
o'clock I saw the litter coming back, borne 
slowly and with infinite precautions. Sister 
Gabrielle walked quite near it, and never 
stopped repeating: "Gently, more gently 
still." 

The little soldier's face was as pale as a 
corpse; his eyes, which seemed to have sunk 
back in their orbits, were closed. When he 
was lifted up to put him on the bed, the 
shock, light as it was, brought on the su- 
preme crisis. His breath, slow and scarcely 
perceptible, quickened strangely. His can- 
did blue eyes opened, dilated, immense, as if 
looking for some one. 

"He wants his parents," the Sister said to 
me in a low voice. "Go and find them 
quickly. It's the end." 

In the quiet chapel that opened from the 



42 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

big wards, the poor Mechins wept and 
prayed. I called them. The mother clasped 
her hands together, turning to me: 

"The operation was successful, wasn't it, 
madame?" 

Alas! I don't know, I fear not; but they 
must come quickly. Their tears blind them; 
she can't see her steps; she stumbles, and I 
have to give her my arm for support. 

The moment she approaches her son she 
recognises the shadow of death on his dear 
face, and would have given a cry of sorrow, 
but that Sister Gabrielle stops her, putting 
a finger on her lips. Soldiers who die must 
be surrounded by so great a peace. 

"Here is your mother, here quite near to 
you," says the calm voice of the Sister in 
the ear of the dying man. "She embraces 
you. Your father is here, too. And here is 
the crucified One, Our Lord, here on your 
lips." 

The little soldier kisses the cross and 
smiles at his mother; then his eyes, wide 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 43 

open, and as if drawn by some invincible at- 
traction, turn and fix themselves on the open 
window opposite the bed, through which can 
be seen the infinite depths of the sky. Noth- 
ing again, till his last breath was drawn, 
could make his gaze turn elsewhere. Where 
have I already beheld a scene like this? I 
remember — it was in Greece, at Athens, last 
year. In the room of the tombs, a simple 
and admirable funeral monument represents 
death. A fine young man of twenty is stand- 
ing ready to depart. His parents, their faces 
torn with sorrow, stretch out their arms to 
him, calling him, but he, so calm in the 
purity of the white marble, his eyes as if 
fascinated, looks fixedly, with all his 
thought, into the distance, one knows not 
where. As we passed this masterpiece, the 
young Greek who was with me whispered to 
me: 

"Look at that boy there. He sees some' 
tiling else." 

Our little soldier, too, seemed to see some- 



44 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

thing else. The chaplain gave him the 
last blessings. The mysterious shore drew 
nearer moment by moment. A deep silence, 
solemnly calm and very moving, fell sud- 
denly on the great room into which the ter- 
rible visitor was so soon to penetrate; truly 
he must die well, surrounded thus by his 
comrades, upheld until the end by a Sister 
of Charity. The wings of her white cornette 
tremble above the young face in its last 
agony. The Sister's voice, already a super- 
natural one, is the last of this world's voices 
that Private Mechin is to hear. She says, 
and he repeats slowly, the supreme invoca- 
tion: "O God, receive me into Thy Para- 
dise. Jesus, have mercy on me. Holy 
Mother of God, pray for us in the hour of 
our death." 

It is over . . . the last breath exhales 
gently. The young soldier's gaze is fixed 
forever on the great light of God. Sister 
Gabrielle gently closes his eyelids and places 
the crucifix on the boy's heart. All is so 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 45 

calm, so evangelical, that the parents them- 
selves dare not weep. Ah, how truly he 
spoke, the chaplain who wrote from the 
front: "The soldiers of France die without 
pain, like angels." 

When the parents were led away for a 
while Sister Gabrielle piously replaced the 
sheet on the dead face, and said to me : 

"This is the time for the patients' dinners. 
If you will, we'll go and serve them, and 
then we'll come back and lay out the body 
of this poor lad here." 

I look at her wonderingly; she is very 
pale, and her eyes are full of unshed tears. 
She busies herself with the necessities of 
them all, with her usual clear-headedness. 
Have they already broken with everything 
of earth, these Sisters, lifted themselves for 
good above the most pardonable frailty*? 



46 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 



THE FUNERAL 

This morning the burial of Private 
Mechin took place. The modest procession 
assembled in the temporary burial court, a 
solitary enclosure planted with solemn 
pines, not lacking in poetry in spite of its 
tragic name. The body lay in the white 
chapel quite hidden beneath the trees. At 
the moment of raising the coffin, the com- 
mand, "Present arms!" sounded outside. 
The remains passed through the midst of 
comrades, their guns in their arms, who sa- 
luted before escorting them as far as the 
cemetery, the muzzles lowered in sign of 
mourning. The words, "Heroism" and 
"Our Country" showed in white letters on 
the black pall, whereon our three colours had 
been thrown. 

"It's a soldier I It's a soldier I" 
The further the procession passed the 
greater grew the crowd of strangers, who fol- 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 47 

lowed weeping. A soldier! That touched 
every one. Everybody asked himself, 
"Where is my own now?" For our army, 
that serene and magnificent army, is built 
chiefly on the wreck of the most intimate 
happinesses, the profoundest feelings of ten- 
derness in those that are left behind. And 
yet to-day this reaction upon oneself, con- 
trary to the usual course of things, only 
begets a more vivid compassion toward these 
poor parents. They have taken each other's 
arms, according to their native habit. The 
mother has covered her white headdress with 
crepe. The crowd keeps at a respectful dis- 
tance from them, and they show out in full 
view, bent by age and sorrow, lamentable, 
leaning on each other, as they follow the 
body of their child, so young a body to go 
to its last resting place, surrounded by the 
military and blooming with flags. On Fa- 
ther Mechin's account they have called out 
the veterans of '70, and the oldest of them 
pronounced a simple and earnest discourse 



48 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

over the lad's grave, "which his comrades 
shall avenge," he says. A tri-coloured rib- 
bon is tied to the wooden cross that marks 
the new grave; other ribbons like it are at- 
tached to the dther crosses roundabout. 

When they leave the cemetery the par- 
ents are led away by people they don't even 
know, who want to save them from the 
dreariness of an inn at such a time. 

"Let us do it for you. Do!" they say; 
"our boys, too, are down there ; we can guess 
what it must mean to you." 

Father Mechin's sorrow is momentarily 
alleviated by so much honour and sympathy. 
He weeps, but also he goes over his old cam- 
paign with these new friends, while the 
mother follows mechanically, seeing and un- 
derstanding nothing. Her head is bent, and 
she can talk only of her son, in a kind of 
dolorous soliloquy. I hear her murmur: 

"My dear little well-beloved son. I 
shan't leave you so far away from us. 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 49 

When the war is over I'll come back and find 
you again; I'll keep your money and have a 
pretty little monument made for you, and 
when I have time I'll come and find you. I 
shall always be with you, always. ..." 

She disappears, and I think of so many 
other mothers in the cities and villages of 
France suffering this same martyrdom each 
day. But our young soldiers' graves are 
sepulchres that teem with life: France will 
come forth from them, stronger and greater, 
fecundated by so much blood and tears. 

A JUST REFLECTION 

When the work in the room by any 
chance leaves a few moments' leisure, we 
naturally chat a little with the soldiers. M. 
de Man found comfort in their talks that he 
could not find anywhere else, he wrote. 
What a school, indeed! Their simple re- 
citals, quite impregnated with heroism and 



50 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

sorrow, follow one another from bed to bed 
with an admirable monotony, in the tenor 
of which France may well glory. 

One of our young wounded talked to me 
about the bearing of the Germans under 
fire: 

"They stand up well under the grape- 
shot," explained this veteran of twenty, who 
had sacrificed an arm for France. "They 
know besides that if they fall back they will 
be shot, even more surely than if they go 
forward. But in separate engagements, in 
hand-to-hand fighting, or when they are 
taken by surprise and have no officers over 
them, they surrender immediately." 

And with a perfectly incommunicable tone 
of disdain, he concluded : 

"You see, it's not the way it is with us; 
they're fellows who don't know how to get 
killed for nothing." 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL $1 



A SIMPLE STORY 

I SET down here, just as I heard it, with- 
out running the risk of spoiling it by per- 
sonal reflections, the admirable story of the 
little Turco with the broken legs, whom I 
questioned about his adventures. 

"In war one naturally mustn't expect to 
get too much to eat; but I'm certain we've 
had our full share of suffering on that score. 
The worst time was in the Argonne once. 
For three days and a half we hadn't touched 
a thing: you really began to feel yourself 
disappear. My lieutenant, whom we liked, 
a fellow who knew how to march, I can tell 
you, got us together and asked : 

" 'Who has any rations in reserve*?' 

"No one answered, because to tell the 
truth, if we had any, it was a temptation to 
save it for yourself. Finally I made up my 
mind. I said, Tve a can of "monkey- 
meat," lieutenant. Here it is.' 



52 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

"Three others, too, after me, gave up their 
tins. 

" I've got one, too,' said the lieutenant. 
'I'll give it to you, as well as this bread that 
I've saved. There are twenty of you: you 
will divide each tin in four parts and eat it, 
with a little piece of bread for each. It isn't 
much, but it will sustain you a while longer.* 

"While the men were doing as he said and 
making the division, the lieutenant went off 
a little way and sat down by himself. He 
even put his head in his hands, and I real- 
ised that it was so he shouldn't see us eat. 
He was pale as pale; I went and stood be- 
fore him and presented arms. 

" 'Well, what more do you want?' he 
asked impatiently. 

" 'Excuse me, lieutenant, but you counted 
up all wrong; we're not twenty.' 

" 'How do you mean — not twenty?' 

" 'No, lieutenant, we're twenty-one, and 
I'll not touch this portion unless you'll take 
half.' 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 53 

"The officers have lots of feeling some- 
times; it's extraordinary. I saw large tears 
on my lieutenant's face, yet he wouldn't ac- 
cept it from me. That was a little too much 
for me, I can tell you. But when he saw 
that he was making me furious, and that in 
truth, as I had told him (for I am pig- 
headed) I would not eat anything, he 
changed his mind abruptly, and said to me: 

" 'Sit down there. Thanks. We'll eat 
together.' 

"Imagine if I was not proud to sit there 
at mess with my lieutenant !" 

COMRADES 

I STOP before Number 67, a vigorous co- 
lonial, who took part in an heroic charge. 
He received four balls in the legs and was 
left on the battlefield, when two Prussians 
came and robbed him, saying cynically: 
"We won't kill you if you'll let us take 
everything and not cry out." 



54 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

Your money or your life — "highway rob- 
bers" — one title more to give those who al- 
ready are called assassins of priests and 
women and children, burners of churches. 
After these cowardly thieves had gone, the 
French soldier worked himself by his elbows 
as far as a rather isolated cabin, where he 
found five other comrades still more gravely 
wounded than himself. They lived there 
four days, weak from loss of blood, trem- 
bling with fever. Each evening, under cover 
of the darkness, the colonial left the house, 
crawling. He used to go and shake the ap- 
ple trees in the garden and bring back to his 
comrades any apples that he had succeeded 
in shaking down. They had only rain water 
to drink. Finally, when two of the wounded 
seemed like to die, the soldier I speak of 
took upon himself the task of going out in 
search of help. 

"I said to the others," he told me, " 'If 
no one comes, my friends, you'll know that 
I've got my reckoning.' Then I slipped out 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL $$ 

in the wood. I met two Prussian sentinels, 
and I stayed two hours stock still, waiting 
until they should be asleep or go away a lit- 
tle distance; then I went on again. I must 
have made six kilometres before I found a 
French soldier again, and how many times 
I felt as if I could not go another inch I My 
arms stuck in the mud, or caught themselves 
in the brambles. I'd hardly strength left 
to work them free. Oh, it's not so easy to 
manage without legs I And then I must say 
really, for four days, I'd had nothing but 
green apples and water in my stomach. But 
at last they succeeded in saving my com- 
rades; that was the main thing." 

He laughed several times quite carelessly 
in telling me this tragic story; but his face 
was serious and moved when he mentioned 
"the comrades." One cannot help seeing 
how much this word means to them. 

"I must say that we were happy every- 
where with the comrades," concluded 
Number lo in finishing the story of priva- 



56 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

tions and hardship that he had endured. 

Another time I was passing some fruit to 
one of them, who reached out to take it 
eagerly — for they were not spoiled in the 
matter of desserts — then stopped himself 
suddenly : "It would be better if you passed 
it round first among the comrades, madame," 
he said. "There might be some of them 
sicker than I am. I'll take some if there's 
any left." 

A young soldier told me the story of the 

retreat, alas, from D : "We had to run 

steadily for four days and five nights, never 
stopping more than five minutes at a time. 
The Germans were so near us that we could 
not hear our commands for the whistling of 
their bullets, and our officers had to give 
their orders by motions. I was as well off 
as any one could be, for I can run fast. All 
of a sudden the man next me got wounded 
in the foot, and fell, crying out 'Help I' Of 
course I couldn't leave him there to be taken 
by the Boches. Two of us grabbed him 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 57 

by the shoulders and dragged him along with 
us. But from that moment it was much 
more difficult for us to get ahead. To tell 
the truth, some spirit must have been watch- 
ing over us, or we never should have gotten 
out at all." 

Some spirit watching over them! Does 
not the victorious, invisible shadow of the 
warrior saint escort our armies^ "Sword 
in hand, eyes alight, France in their hearts" 
— always as it used to be. 

One needs no excuse to congratulate our 
soldiers on their devotion to their "chums." 
It's quite natural that they should help each 
other, isn't it — under the fire of the Ger- 
mans, as much as in their villages — more, 
much more than in the villages; — for under 
the fire of the Germans, the egotism of every 
day, the absorbing preoccupations and self- 
interests of daily life, disappear, and nothing 
is left to them but the noblest traits of the 
French character. That character is capable 
of running the supremest risks for the sake 



58 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

of comradeship that may have seemed a lit- 
tle vulgar before, but which is now saintly 
and heroic. 

Perhaps the most elevated phase of this 
character, and at the same time the most pro- 
foundly human one, shows in this other story 
by the same soldier: 

"One day the Boches were in flight," he 
said. "We were pursuing them with the 
bayonet in some woods. I had my eyes on 
one of them particularly. He was fat and 
heavy and was getting tangled up all the 
time, while as for me, I jumped easily over 
obstacles. (Do you see this image of the 
two races'?) I caught him up at last, and 
with one lunge buried my bayonet in his 
back. It pierced him clear through. Oh, I 
felt badly: it was the first — the first man 
ever, I hope you believe me, that I had killed 
with my own hand. I was looking round 
for a second when I heard something stirring 
in a thicket. I threw myself at it, my bayo- 
net fixed; but a dying, wailing voice cried at 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 59 

me: 'Comrade! Comrade of France I' 
Now this is a word, as we know perfectly 
well, that is often used as a trick; but what 
can you do? When they call you comrade 
like that, it's impossible, you can't make up 
your mind to kill them. This time I did 
right. It was really a dying man, dying in 
agony even, I'm quite sure. He held out his 
hands to me and they were already cold. I 
shook them and called him too, 'Comrade.' 
Then I yelled to a quarter-master sergeant 
to give him a drink. Myself I preferred to 
go on and not wait. France comes first — 
doesn't it?" 

What moves you most when you hear 
such stories, what forces the tears into your 
eyes, is the touching lack of self-conscious- 
ness in these lads. They were so far from 
thoughts of war three months ago, yet now 
to-day they speak quite naturally the lan- 
guage of epic poetry. France is forever the 
land of miracles. . . . 



6o IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 



ENGAGED 

I KNOW now whence comes that expres- 
sion of secret joy, that reflection of inner 
light that glows on the face of Number 17, 
even when his suffering is the most cruel. I 
ought not perhaps to say it, for it's a sweet 
secret that has been confided to me, but Num- 
ber 17's engaged. Oh, how this Marie of 
his, this rustic inhabitant of our mountains, 
is beloved I I think few women can ever have 
received letters more touching, or more filled 
with deep and delicate tenderness than hers. 
These letters indeed are Pierre's main occu- 
pation now. He takes advantage of his pos- 
tal frank and writes two of them each day. 
He really has to make up for lost time, hasn't 
he"? The soldiers knew how to deny them- 
selves the thoughts — such tender thoughts 
— of their Maries during their hard cam- 
paigning, and this fiance, too, though his 
heart was full of love, became in duty bound 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 6l 

a terrible warrior, a dealer of death. But, 
at present, on his hospital bed, where there 
is nothing to do but suffer, let the dear 
thought of her, full as it is of sweetness and 
promise, come back to him. Let it come 
back! Every thought is for her, and he in- 
deed is veritably hers. For him Marie's 
shadow is always there; she is part of the 
least scene, the greyest hours of this hos- 
pital life. He declared to me — in a low 
voice, as always when he speaks of her — 
that he never gets tired of her. "Even when 
I don't write to her I think of her." For 
he can't be distracted from her a single min- 
ute; in one way or another he must occupy 
himself with the thought of her always. 
Truly a rare sentiment blossoms in this hon- 
est and simple heart that has given itself 
so profoundly. Many fine ladies perhaps 
might envy Marie, and Marie, later, if she 
can understand, will thank the terrible war 
that has made her cry so hard. She will not 
marry a simple peasant now, but a hero, one 



62 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

of those, to be sure, who were "French by 
first choice," to use the fine expression of 
Mr. Barres. Despite the obscure way of life 
to which this young man will go back, it 
will always be true that his actions, at a 
given moment, might have inspired Virgil 
or Homer. In all ranks of society the sad 
betrothed women of to-day will be very 
proud on the day the soldiers shall come 
home. I know some of them already who, 
though living yet in this uncertain, menac- 
ing hour of peril, bring a valiant coquetry 
into play. It's very touching to see the 
youth of France, at an age when happiness 
is their right, rise so easily to such heights 
of sacrifice. But patience! They will be 
paid back too in happiness. The day of 
home-coming will strike deep into their in- 
most hearts. Separated by death's danger, 
their beings will stir anew for one an- 
other with never-to-be-forgotten sentiments. 
Their affections, steeped in this fortifying 
bath of heroism and renunciation, will 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 63 

spring up again enriched with devotion and 
deeper tenderness. Number 17 feels this, 
when he writes to his dear Marie: "You 
see, Marie, I loved you a great deal; but I 
think that I should not have known, except 
for the war, how to love you the way I do 
now." There is never a questionable ex- 
pression or gross allusion in these soldier's 
letters written by a farmer's son. Each one 
repeats the same rather naive expressions of 
tenderness. He puts them in every time 
without ever varying them. It is true in 
this way monotony becomes a quality. You 
feel the extreme pleasure that Pierre under- 
goes in writing his sweetheart's name as 
often as possible: "My dear love, I re- 
ceived your letter yesterday with such great 
pleasure. I believed you had forgotten 
me. And then I said to myself. Or she is 
sick, or she has had too much to do for the 
wounded. Dear Marie, you tell me you'd 
like to be near me so as to take care of me. 
Oh, how glad I should be if you could come; 



64 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

if I could see you there near my bed, like 
the Sister. And we'd talk of the old times." 
(He is twenty-three and she twenty-one: it's 
true they've been engaged five years.) 
"Thank you for the photograph; your sister 
is carrying out her promise very well. You'd 
think it was one of the pictures you see in 
the illustrated magazines. You must ex- 
cuse me, please, if my letters are badly writ- 
ten — in bed, you know, it isn't so easy to 
write. You, oh, indeed, you write very 
well! It's a pleasure to read your letters. 
Follow your own ideas about the muffler; 
what you like will always please me. 
Marie, I long to hear more news still from 
you. It seems to me I can read your next 
letter already. Make it a very long one, so 
I have to take two hours to read it. And 
that piece of a rose from your house that 
you sent me! Marie! 

"My dear beloved one, I should like to 
write you long, interesting letters, the way 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 65 

you write me, but I see nothing here in bed. 
My foot continues to enjoy good health, 
better and better all the time. You think I 
suffered, but that's nothing, as long as I 
can walk, and haven't got to tell you, 'Marie, 
I'm infirm; I can't support a wife; we can't 
think of getting married any more.' Oh, if 
I'd had to talk to you like that — think a bit, 
Marie! I can assure you that I never cried 
down there, but that I've cried more than 
once in my bed thinking of that. However, 
I'd have said it to you just the same, for I 
should not have wanted you to live in pov- 
erty on my account. 

"When I received your letter yesterday at 
four o'clock. Sister Gabrielle was near my 
bed, and so I showed it to her, and she said 
to me, 'You must be very happy; she's writ- 
ten you a long one.' I answered her: 'She 
always writes me like that !' She told me to 
send you her kind regards, and to say that 
you are very good. You write me that you 



66 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

are well again; I hope it's really true. Take 
care now. It's very cold. Above all things, 
you mustn't be sick. 

"You ask me how many there are in my 
room? Sixty-five and the oldest of them is 
twenty-nine. Don't distress yourself. I'll 
get well, and in a little while we shall be 
together again. What a happy day that will 
be for us, Marie! I can't believe it. At 
night, when I can't sleep, I say to myself 
quite low: 

" 'I shall see her soon, I shall see her soon !' 
And sometimes I am sorry to see the daylight 
come, because then it isn't so quiet, and I 
am less at peace to think of you. When we 
two are alone I'll tell you what I suffered, 
and you'll tell me it's impossible. Never- 
theless it's true; but it isn't worth while 
talking about it yet. You ask if I had for- 
gotten you; you know well I hadn't, only 
duty must be done. Even if I wanted to 
forget you, Marie, my heart couldn't do it, 
because I love you. 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 67 

"You tell me it gives you pleasure to 
write me long letters, to keep me happy; 
and I, oh, I'm so happy when I read them. 
I see you always have things to tell me. 
That shows me that you think with me^ and 
I can say, too, that I always think with you. 
You tell me that you dreamed about me. I, 
— well, five nights ago I dreamed about you, 
and I didn't dare write you about it. I see 
that you tell me and so I'll tell you, too. 
Marie, you know what dreams mean? Do 
you want me to tell you"? Each day I read 
your letters two and three times; that way I 
know them almost by heart, for the night, 
when there isn't enough light to read by. 
Soon there will come the happiness of seeing 
each other again, dear well-beloved. Still 
another time, I love you, Marie.'* 

SEEN AT THE RAILWAY STATION 

During the mobilisation the railway sta- 
tion at X was the scene of many laud- 



68 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

able and quite special instances of devotion. 
People sat up there day and night to wait 
for the trains of soldiers and revictual 
them. Orders came in every minute, by 
telephone, by telegraph, brief orders such as 
these: "Coffee for five hundred soldiers in 
two hours; sixty dinners for this evening; 
new dressings for a sanitary train," etc., etc. 
A society woman, serving as improvised cook 
and hospital nurse, executed most of these 
curt and various directions, and never even 
thought of being tired. Her devoted spirit 
found a way to cope with all the miscel- 
laneous tasks that the exigencies of the sta- 
tion gave rise to. Like a true general of 
France, she cleverly made the most of the 
zeal with which those about her stood ready 
to see her orders carried out. What curious 
things passed on all around her! What in- 
teresting personages filed through the little 
room — infirmary and kitchen in one — which 
was now her realm I They presented to me 
there one day, a good-looking young dragoon 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 69 

who was on his way back to the front for 
the third time. Each time he came back he 
took every precaution, before he was fairly 
cured even, to see that he should be sent out 
again. His seventeenth scar was just heal- 
ing. When he gave out this figure some 
one cried: "But he's not a man; he's a 
skimmer." He joined in the other's amuse- 
ment with his clear French laugh, but said: 

"Just the same, how would you like to 
get seventeen holes shot in you like this and 
then be treated like a skimmer *?" 

One of the most interesting moments at 
the station was that in which the following 
episode took place. A sanitary train filled 
with wounded arrived unexpectedly. They 
were severe cases all, two hundred of them 
unable to sit up. They needed revictualing, 
but at the preceding station only bread and 
cheese had been given them — an extraordi- 
nary diet for people with fever, on the point 
of undergoing operations! But there was 
nothing else to give and they had accepted it, 



70 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

in the best spirit. Diplomacy had to be used 
indeed to get these dangerous provisions away 
from them. They all protested — which was 
natural, for they had had nothing for many 
hours. They asked for milk and it was 
promised to them — most imprudently. The 
station master, who was undergoing days of 
real distress, had, as a matter of fact, only 
one jug of milk. One jug for five hundred 
invalids, and the train stopping for only half 
an hour I It was actually a physical impos- 
sibility to go to town and back in the half 
hour's time. What was to be done*? People 
got together. People discussed the situation. 
Now it happened that opposite the convoy 
of wounded, a cattle train was stationed, due 
to start in a moment in the opposite direc- 
tion. There was one car full of cows, their 
good old heads looking so peaceful in these 
warlike times as they kept clumsily trying to 
thrust themselves through the openings, but 
never quite succeeded in doing so. The good 
herdsman, a native of our mountain heights, 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 7I 

blue-bloused, a big stick in his hand, came 
up and bowed awkwardly. 

"They're French, you know," he said, 
pointing to his beasts, "and they'll gladly 
give up their milk for the wounded sol- 
diers." 

His suggestion was received with acclama- 
tion. Everybody began to milk, and the 
spectacle of these improvised milkmen and 
milkmaids made our dear wounded men 
laugh. Well, it was not without its pic- 
turesqueness, after all. More than fifty jugs 
of milk were distributed in this way. It was 
really what one might call a providential 
revictualling. 

A FIRST COMMUNION 

In Sister Gabrielle's room one of the pa- 
tients was a kind of Apache, forty years old, 
a fighter with a most suspicious past, suffer- 
ing from a horrible wound in the right arm. 
After the severe operation that he had had 



72 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

to submit to, we all saw him awaken out 
of a veritable crisis of madness, due to a 
state of habitual alcoholism. He was ap- 
parently bent on strangling the unfortunate 
interne who attended him, who would hardly 
have gotten safely out of it all without a 
bad wound, if the Sister had not thrown 
herself between them just in time. I must 
confess that the spectacle of this half-naked 
man, his body tattooed all over with 
women's pictures, drivelling, yelling and 
threateningly waving his bloodstained arms, 
was most impressive and repugnant. 

"You, Sister, I don't wish you any harm," 
he howled in his revolutionary way; "you 
are a benefactress of humanity; but not to 
be able to strangle this man, here, I who 
have stabbed people in all the cross-roads of 
Paris, who have killed policemen with my 
hands," etc., etc. And the Sister answered 
with her unvarying sweetness, "Your arm is 
very bad, my boy. You must lie down and 
keep quiet. I'm going to give you a drink, 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 73 

and I shall stay now near by you. Come, 
now, be good." 

The Apache, who was so called even by 
the comrades, remained for a time a truly 
terrible patient. He never thanked anyone 
for the care that was taken of him, and 
never omitted to sneer at prayers. He called 
us sometimes to his bedside from the most 
pressing business, solely to say to us: 

"You know I don't believe in your good 
God." Orders were given by Sister Gabrielle 
never to make any answer to him, and to be 
just as scrupulously attentive to him as to 
the other wounded. 

Well, after a while our Apache, becom- 
ing little by little quieter and more polite, 
asked one day, in tears, if they wouldn't be 
so kind as to give him a catechism and some 
instruction in religion, that Catholic religion, 
that he had always attacked without any 
understanding of it. Last Sunday he made 
his first communion with touching fervour. 
So much for religious ceremonies in wartime. 



74 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

CONVERSATION AS IT IS TO-DAY 

There's no useless visiting, no wasted 
time now in France. When one steals an 
hour from work to go and see one's friends 
it's only to find that glory has just touched 
them in some way — joy or sorrow. Women 
struck down by the most cruel grief — wives 
whose homes and hearts are broken forever; 
mothers who have felt their own blood flow 
away in the veins of their sons, and some 
part of their own lives extinguished in the 
last breath of these so dear lives — even such 
as these don't recognise the right to remain 
long idle. They hide their tears beneath 
their crepe and busy themselves doing things 
for the comrades of those who will never 
come back again. The thought of the war 
follows them in all these glorious tasks. 
Everything centres in "the front" hence- 
forth : sadness, happiness, hope, courage ; and 
all of our tenderness and compassion, all 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 75 

our labours, go back there too. Our souls 
yearn toward those moving frontiers, those 
frontiers that are no longer composed of ma- 
terial French earth only, but of living 
Frenchmen, pressing forward, all the time. 
One doesn't talk any longer except of these 
big things. Last week at a big military clinic 
I went to see a young officer who had come 
back from the front for the second time, 
afflicted with a new wound, as he called it, 
and even with an old one yet, in spite of 
which he was insisting on going back too 
soon. There was quite a reunion there, and 
quite a good deal of talk and chat. At an- 
other time my arrival would have discon- 
certed them, but now their conversation was 
far removed from smoking room talk and 
dubious subjects. Young men and old, 
women and children, we could plainly read 
the thought of France in one another's eyes. 
Ah, beloved land, fated forever to unprece- 
dented adventures in the realm of morals as 
in that of glory, miraculous France of 1914, 



76 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

who smilingly, despite the blood and tears, 
hears but a single rhythm beating in the re- 
united hearts of all her children ! At certain 
moments one feels such a glow of happiness 
at having her for one's native land that one 
simply must speak out about it. French, 
French — one is no longer surfeited with this 
word nowadays. That is certainly the view 
of the young officers, with their silent en- 
thusiasm. They were talking of "Her" 
steadily, when I came in. One of them was 
reading, from his war diary, a very interest- 
ing account of the battle of the Marne, of 
which I heard the following passage : 

"When General M took command of 

his troops he could see at once that their 
morale had suffered severely in the successive 
movements of retreat. The day when he 
ordered the offensive, that had now to be 
maintained at any price, the soldiers, down 
in their trenches, without absolutely refusing 
to obey him, couldn't make up their minds 
to budge, but lay there murmuring sullenly: 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 77 

They whistle so, General, the bullets whis- 
tle so.' With that General M began 

to cast about him for some means, not to 
terrify them in the German manner, but to 
awaken the old careless French bravado in 
their better selves. This was what he did: 
he climbed up alone on the edge of the 
trenches in the bottom of which the soldiers 
lay. He stood there upright for ten minutes. 
He was literally enveloped in a hurricane 
of bullets and shrapnel, but God willed that 
he should step down again safe and sound. 
As he did so he remarked simply: 'They 
whistle, boys, but, as you see, they don't hurt 
you: they're harmless.' Since then orders 
have been issued to our officers not to expose 
themselves needlessly: their lives are too 
precious to us. But this act of sublime 
French folly so electrified the men of this 
regiment that it made them invincible." 

The other day, in an admirably French 
drawing-room, some one who knew this hero 
himself, recalled a will written in one line 



78 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

and found by an unhappy father, Monsieur 
I , on his son's body: "If we are vic- 
torious, I beg my parents not to put on 
mourning for me." To what heights of for- 
getfulness of everything that is not "Hers" 
can they not climb ! Verily, verily, they love 
her as one can only love at twenty years — 
with no reserves — with all their youth. 

A SOLDIER'S COMPLIMENT AND 
SONG 

I FOUND myself once in a convalescent 
home at the hour when the Prefect had come 
to visit the wounded. After the customary 
distribution of cigarettes, one soldier, with 
his arm in a sling, rose, and amidst general 
emotion delivered the following compli- 
mentary speech: 

"Madame, in the name of my comrades, 
will you permit me to thank you for your 
amiable visit, and the presents that you spoil 
us with so? We are surrounded here with 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 79 

such devoted care that our wounds heal as 
if by magic. Will you kindly express to the 
Prefect our patriotic sentiments, and tell him 
how proud we are to have had the honour 
of shedding our blood for France? Tell him 
of our ardent desire to return soon and take 
our places in the battle front among our com- 
rades; to chase these cursed, sanguinary, dev- 
astating Teutons away forever from our 
country's soil." 

That's what our soldiers are. The mo- 
ment they find themselves in the presence of 
some one who stands a little for the authority 
of France, they feel the need of putting into 
words their eager desire for victory at all 
costs, as if they talked to France herself, and 
renewed to her the offer of their lives in 
sacrifice. You ought really to see the ex- 
pression of their faces, the tears of energy 
and resolution that burn in their eyes, while 
the most lettered of the band speaks up for 
them. A moment later, as I looked at the 
good stove which warmed the room, and 



8o IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

round which they spent the pleasant hours of 
their well-earned convalescence, some one re- 
marked dreamily: 

"You don't think of the trenches any 
more here, do you?" 

An indignant protest rose on all sides: 
"Don't think any more about the trenches? 
Why, that's as much as to say that's all you 
do think of I How could you forget the com- 
rades, with their feet freezing down there, 
while we warm ourselves here*?" 

The ward nurse told us there was a little 
infantryman among the wounded here who 
had a very pretty voice and knew a lot of 
songs. Immediately he was asked to give us 
one. The request made him very unhappy : 
he was not afraid to sing at the front before 
the Boches, but here really he did not dare. 
One entreaty made to him gave good reasons 
for our persistence. "Oh, please sing, we 
beg you to sing. They'll always sound so 
fine now — soldiers' songs." He sang, and his 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 



81 



young male voice made our hearts quiver 
with an emotion that no great artist could 
ever have given us with a song profane. 
For to him his song was a sacred thing. Just 
imagine the scene for yourself. We are in 
the year 1914, and he is a French soldier. 
From outside gay trumpet calls come in, 
those same calls perhaps that in certain places 
at the front summon men forth to die. Imag- 
ine that there is an audience of women, all 
whose tender thoughts go down there, and 
thirty wounded comrades who are getting 
ready like him to return to the firing line. 
Imagine this, and then think how his voice 
must stir them with his soldier's song: 

Soldiers brave, companions hardy, 
Lo, the glorious day is here. 
Hark ye now the clarion calling. 
Presaging your victory near. 
Fly, intrepid soldiers all! 
France is up, and watching there. 
When the sounds of combat call. 
In the vanguard do and dare. 



82 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

REFRAIN 

Forward, forward, brave battalions. 
Jealous of our freedom be. 
If the enemy comes near us. 
Forward, forward and advance: 
Death to the enemies of France. 

When your rapid foot and true. 
Skims the soil and scales the height. 
One would think across the blue 
Eagles from the peaks took flight. 
In the vortex black you fly; 
Sometimes, unseen hounds of war. 
In the plough-share's path you lie. 
Rising fiercer than before. 

Heroes valiant and inspired. 
All the world our fathers won; 
And this world regenerate. 
Fecund is with every son. 
Noble grandsires, rest in peace; 
Sleep within each august grave, 
France can count upon us now. 
Sons shall worthy prove and brave. 

Caught and stricken to the heart. 
Mortal wounds, O France, you feel. 
On your bruised, blood-stained breast. 
Stamps the conqueror's brutal heel. 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 83 

France, O France, lift up your head, 
From your face wash off the stain. 
Soon the dead our tread shall waken. 
Of Alsace and of Lorraine. 



ALWAYS SUFFERING 

Always and incessantly one returns to the 
subject of their sufferings. What an accu- 
mulation of sorrows, tragically varied, 
weighs down our unfortunate land ! Into Sis- 
ter Gabrielle's room to-day there came with 
radiant faces, a father and mother who had 
journeyed from the depths of the Correze — 
more than four hundred kilometres — in the 
sure belief that they should find with us their 
only son, from whom they had had no news 
for almost three months. By a cruel chance 
his exact name and regiment were those of 
another soldier, who was indeed here, and 
figured in the lists published by St. Dominic's 
Hospital. The unhappy parents, arriving 
full of joy, were confronted with a stranger's 
face. The group around his bed was heart- 



84 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

rending. The young soldier who was the 
involuntary cause of this unutterable decep- 
tion wept with the father and mother. 

YOUNG RECRUITS AND TERRI- 
TORIALS 

At the beginning of the war one saw going 
out as our defenders, and coming back 
wounded, only the "little young ones" among 
our soldiers. Oh, these little young, how 
sympathetic and winning they were, with 
their irresistible gaiety in the face of every- 
thing, their bravado, their fine carelessness 
of life. By their side now a graver sacrifice 
is being made, one that is sadder and more 
conscious of itself, namely, that of the men 
no longer young, who have had to leave a 
wife and children, a home of which they 
were the support. Such as these lived tran- 
quilly, far from the movement of troops ; less 
than any one did they dream of war; and in 
truth one must needs admire them the more 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 85 

for rising to such heights of sacrifice. In 
several places at the front people said their 
service had insured success. At the hospital 
I saw them suffer, die, alas, as veritable 
heroes of France, and I lost that slight ten- 
dency to irony with which one too readily 
looked upon them at their setting out. These 
men fulfilled their hard duties in the most 
unselfish and humble conditions possible: in 
one day their whole existence was upheaved, 
their laboriously acquired small property re- 
nounced, all their customary ways broken 
with ; and at a certain age this perhaps repre- 
sents the most painful phase of duty. They 
marched to death, in a word, who had had 
time to grow fixed in life. They had spread 
out the roots of their lives, and now they 
found themselves dependent on younger men, 
under the sway of younger men's careless 
enthusiasm and quite fresh physical forces, 
thanks to this new experience of war by 
which the younger are put first. But, for 
the rest, everything arranges itself quite mar- 



86 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

vellously, and nothing is more touching than 
the social comradeship that was established 
forthwith between grey moustache and 
beardless chin. The young soldiers treat 
their elders fraternally in a way, but always 
with a shade of respect, too. Tact is a French 
quality, and the younger men know quite 
well the meaning of such words as husband 
and father of a family ; know how significant 
they are of responsibilities and pain and care, 
of tears shed on their departure. The brave 
territorials, on the other hand, look admir- 
ingly on the feats of their young brothers in 
arms. The other day a group of grizzled 
soldiers was going through its manoeuvres 
with great application under the direction of 
a little twenty-year-old corporal, who had a 
chubby face like a pink-and-white baby, 
adorned, however, by some glorious scars. 
An old campaigner, passing by, called out: 
"Well, well! Look at the company baby 
they sent down there to learn things so he 
could teach the territorials." 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 87 

UNDER MARTIAL LAW 

Declarations of war sometimes have un- 
expected consequences. A poor woman, very- 
unhappy at home, was crying yesterday, and 
kept repeating: "If only soldiers were the 
police. Oh, if soldiers were the police I" 
When she was asked the meaning of this ex- 
clamation she replied: "Well, you see, dur- 
ing the mobilisation, one evening my hus- 
band was beating me in the street, as he 
often does, and a patrol of Turcos passed 
that way. 

" 'What are you doing there?' they asked 
my husband. 

"He answered them: 'Leave me alone. 
She's my wife. It's nothing to you.' 

" 'Indeed it is something to us. When 
soldiers are police, people don't beat their 
wives any more, and to prove it you're going 
to come along with us to the station.' 

"And as they were leading him away, they 
said to me : 



88 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

" 'That never happens where we come 
from.' " 

The Turcos make some rather hardy state- 
ments. But in the presence of the enemy 
they have shown so well their ability to 
defend our rights that we mustn't question 
too curiously whether they apply them 
strictly in their own homes. 

OUR PRIESTS 

They are everywhere, but at the front 
especially, and the most diverse opinions are 
reconciled on the subject of what soldiers 
our country has in them ! A higher will vic- 
toriously pursued its ends in bringing to- 
gether again, in the closest and most unex- 
pected brotherhood, across what a chaos of 
tragic developments, the Catholic priest and 
the French soul. 

"I will punish thee because thou hast for- 
gotten my name," said the Lord in other 
times, in vengeance against his chosen peo- 
ple. Alas, dear France, wast thou not the 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 89 

eldest of his daughters, and hadst thou not 
forgotten and denied his name, that terrible, 
protecting name which comes back so natu- 
rally to thy lips to-day? Not on the battle- 
field do we women see our priests in their 
activities, but at the hospital, at the bedside 
of those who suffer and die for France, every- 
where, every day. The ones who have not 
gone to the front devote all their time, wholly 
and unreservedly, to the soldiers, especially 
to the wounded soldiers. The personal 
measures to which the administration is not 
equal, overwhelmed as it is by its duties, have 
been taken upon themselves by the priests; 
if there are letters to write, sad news to be 
related, confidences to be received, encour- 
agement to be given, everything you can 
think of — all are laid upon the priests. 

The importance of their role touches the 
very mysteries of the soul; no one has the 
right to measure it. But who knows what 
our priests will not do to maintain this 
fire of self-sacrifice and enthusiasm in the 



90 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

soldier's heart, this fire which must go on 
burning to the end in France, in the least 
ambulance, and for which those who work 
and worry, far back from the common 
field of danger, far from the captains and 
the shouts of conflict, are more tried than by 
the rude life of camps. The soldier divines 
unerringly that with the priests succor of a 
human kind and at the same time a superior 
power are given him; and also he loves him 
and wants him and relies on him for every- 
thing. Recently I noticed a new orderly at 
the hospital, and observed that he was par- 
ticularly kind and thoughtful with the pa- 
tients. A soldier saw that I was gazing at 
this man, with a bit of astonishment, and 
said to me, motioning toward him: "But, 
madame, it's a priest !" His accent was un- 
translatable. Verily no terrestrial power 
could ever rob them of this mysterious influ- 
ence, this "heavenly fire" that comes to them 
from God himself. From their chief down 
to the most humble among them, they are 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL Ql 

indeed the successors of those to whom "all 
power" was given, "in heaven as well as on 
the earth." 



THE LITTLE FRENCHMEN 

One fighter who had "come back from 
down there" told me it often happened, when 
families moved away from the unhappy, 
devastated regions, that boys from twelve to 
fifteen refused to follow their parents in their 
flight, thinking themselves big enough to get 
a place among the soldiers. The troops give 
a good welcome to these young Frenchmen. 
They present them to their captain, and, 
their identity once established, the boys have 
the right to be named as of the regiment, and 
share its destinies. They eat at the soldiers' 
mess, and are not held to account for any- 
thing, free to do as their fancy wills. But 
this fancy never varies, they say; in the 
wreckage of the battlefields they speedily 
pick up arms for themselves, and shoot them 



92 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

incessantly, with an incredible boldness that 
promptly wins the enthusiastic affection of 
their elders. Oh, these little Frenchmen of 
1914! There will be powder mixed with 
blood in their veins. What generations they 
are preparing for the future! 

WHAT WE RECEIVE FROM THE 
FRONT 

Complaints about the bad weather, the 
cold, the rations? Not a bit of it! You 
don't know the souls of our militants if you 
suppose that. What we receive from the 
front is either heroic stories, or programmes 
of fetes, such as this: 

CONCERT GIVEN NOVEMBER 22, 1914 

Behind the Trenches During Our Regiment's 
Three Days' Rest 

With the assistance of the soldiers whose names 
follow: Tharaud of the Opera-Comique ; Kanony, 
Nimes Theatre; Dupin, Municipal Theatre, 
Nancy; Trantoul, Grand Theatre, Lyons; Barthe, 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 93 

Brest Theatre; Escudie, Crystal Palace, Mar- 
seilles; Josthan of the Kursaal, Reims; Gubret, 
prize man of the Paris Conservatory; Sizes, pro- 
fessor of the violoncello, Limoges; Sergeant Du- 
mail, character singer (amateur) ; Sergeant 
Moucdoues, Lafayette Theatre. 

Programme 

1. What the Stones Say (Joubert). 2. The 
Dream Passes (Krier). 3. Carmen, Air de la 
Fleur (Bizet); The Masked Ball (Verdi), etc., 
etc. 

And so on for twelve numbers, ending up with 
the soldiers' chorus from Faust. 



CORRESPONDENCE IN WAR TIME 

The subjects people write of, like the 
things they talk about, have undergone a 
transformation to-day. No, indeed, one 
doesn't write banal letters any more, that tell 
you nothing at all. The very existence of 
the nation, the dearest lives, the secret hero- 
ism of which they have been capable, re- 
vealed magnificently in the face of death — 
such are the subjects on which one exchanges 



94 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

one's hopes, one's feverish anxieties, one's 
felicitations to-day. Energy, patience, daily 
sacrifices, supreme resignation to our coun- 
try's cause, such are the sentiments one cher- 
ishes, on which one seeks to keep up courage. 
Marvellous letters of war time I One can 
cite from them anywhere; they will all give 
the same sound. The country has only one 
soul now. 

There was a young widow, Mme. de 

V , whose husband, an officer of great 

valour, promoted with the most flattering 
distinction, had expired in the hospital at 
Epinal some hours before his wife's arrival. 
"In these hours of distress, my thoughts go 
often toward you," she wrote to a friend. 
"What shall I say to you? I am proud, with 
a sorrowful pride, but crushed amid the ruins 
of my happiness that was only yesterday so 
complete. There are moments when I can- 
not believe the terrible thing that has made 
me suffer so is true. It is indeed true, never- 
theless. God has caught me back, after let- 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 95 

ting me enjoy for five years that rich intelli- 
gence, that fine spirit from which I was so 
proud to take my lessons. I find myself 
alone again, facing emptiness. Pray that I 
may have the strength to go on with the task 
we two began, of bringing up, as his father 
would have done, this son whom I should 
like so much to be a soldier." 

There was a little infantryman from 
Africa, a volunteer, who wrote to his broth- 
ers under arms : "You are fighting, you are 
giving your blood, and I, here I am, doing 
exercises, with nothing to be afraid of. Oh, 
what jealousy I feel! Happily they are 
putting our instruction through very rapidly. 
I have hopes that we shall leave soon, be- 
cause they're already choosing those of us 
that are to serve as scouts. If only I 
can be chosen! I put my name down at 
once." 

There were so many then, though one did 
not know it, so many of the youth of France, 
who dreamed of giving their lives for their 



96 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

country. In many other letters still I find 
the proofs. Mile, de F , true French- 
woman of the French, told me thus of her 
brother's death: 

"Thank you for your compassionate pages; 
it is a sweet comfort, in our great woe, to 
find it so unanimously shared by all France, 
where everyone may be prepared, alas, for 
the same supreme sorrow. Our Robert that 
we loved so well had the glorious death of 
which he had always dreamed. He was lead- 
ing his brave infantrymen for the third time 
that day in a heroic bayonet charge, in a 
forest in the Vosges, when he fell, struck by 
two bullets full in front. His men saw him 
stretched on the moss beneath a great pine 
tree. They would have gone to fetch his 
body, but a furious charge of the enemy 
obliged them to retire. Seven officers, in- 
timate friends of Robert, fell that day, with 
the battalion chief. What will the bar- 
barians do with his dear remains? Shall we 
never find his grave again? Our eyes at 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 97 

least follow him in the skies, where his soul, 
that was so ardent in its heroism, no doubt 
has taken a place among the martyrs. My 
poor friend, you divine how much we suffer, 
and yet, we are happy and proud to have 
given him to France. He made a victorious 
campaign at the outset; we had enthusiastic 
letters. Afterwards they had to fall back 
and back, and he came to die near his dear 
garrison at St. Die, in the forest of Ram- 
bervilles, without having seen success. On 
August twenty-fifth, the eve of his death, he 
wrote us a letter full of courage, even of 
absolute faith in victory. Our dragoon took 
part in the grand battle of the Marne. Now 
•he is fighting in the Aisne night and day. 
He has had two horses shot under him. May 
God keep him for us! Hearty and tender 
greetings to you, and confidence in victory 
so dearly won." 

Victory — they think of that always and 
before everything. "I hope," a mother in 
mourning had the courage to write, "I hope 



98 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

our dearly loved son, who has so often 
dreamed of dying for France, with God's 
will may win the final triumph, and help 
protect those who struggle still. I read in 
the paper the names of your five sons, all 
wounded, and yet going back to the firing 
line. You ought to be proud, and I share 
your glory and anguish. May God spare 
you the grief I suffer, and save your brave 
sons for you, who will be so happy to bring 
back their laurels to you." 

When one begins to talk about the moth- 
ers, the documents pile up — intimate docu- 
ments, damp with tears, that pay for glory 
without hunting for it. Thus Captain de 
S wrote to one who had very spe- 
cially and silently filled this heroic role of 
mother : 

"No monuments, you see, are built to mothers* 

woes; 
And if one tried, as by all rights one should. 
To mark by bronze or marble what they suffer. 
The passers-by could not endure to see their 

tears." 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL QQ 

Again this is what Mme. de C wrote 

from a corner of France that was rich in 
heroes : 

"My grief is unutterable. My beloved son 
was my pride, the greatest source of happi- 
ness to me in this world. God has taken him 
from me in the full bloom of his youthful 
career and soldierly zeal, and the sacrifice 
is so much beyond my mother's strength that 
I can bear it only at the foot of the cross, 
trying to imitate his courage. He was made 
captain on the battlefield for deeds done un- 
der arms and a mission valiantly carried out, 
though he enjoyed his reward for it only a 
little while; but what glory consoles a 
mother in the loss of such a son^ He fell 
near Nancy and I was able to recover his 
body, but while I was away my youngest 
son, Louis, eighteen years old, who was en- 
rolled at the beginning of the war, was called 
out too. I did not see him again on my 
return, and already he is fighting. Our 
hearts, dear friend, are being put to the tor- 



lOO IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

ture. We must pray that our sufferings may 
purchase victory." 

To acquire this so much desired victory 
few women would have given ten fighters, 
like Mme. de L . 

"My J has just fallen for his coun- 
try," she wrote last month. "I offer up my 
great grief and all my tears to God and 
France. You knew my son; you know 
what I have lost. The only thought that 
can lighten this terrible blow is the knowl- 
edge that my boy had realised his dearest 
dream: he had always yearned ardently for 
this heroic death. He wrote to me the day 
of the mobilisation: 'If it were not for the 
memory of your face, this would be the hap- 
piest day of my life.' I was told that he 
said to one of his comrades, half an hour 
before he was struck full in the breast by a 
bursting shell : 'I have just made my act of 
contrition, my preparation for death, as I do 
each day. Out here you must always re- 
member that the next moment may be your 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 101 

last.' He was the first of my ten sons to 
fall. How many more will France ask of 
me? I gave them to her with all my heart 
when they went off, but my soul is torn." 

A LITTLE REFUGEE 

As I was going one day to visit one of our 
patients who had had to be moved into the 
contagious ward, I was rather surprised to 
perceive in the middle of the long range of 
white beds a little childish face that con- 
trasted strangely with the military visages 
all about it. It was that of a delicious child 
of seven years, with big eyes full of intelli- 
gence and candour. He himself gave me his 
name and qualifications — not without a 
shade of disdain of me as a provincial. 

"I am a refugee from Paris, madame; 
and who are you*?" 

I introduced myself in turn, and we chat- 
ted together. My little interlocutor soon 
gave me his confidence. He told me, smil- 



102 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

ing, as if he were telling the happiest of 
stories, a childish, lamentable history of neg- 
lect and abandonment. 

"I was almost always alone at Paris," he 
told me; "mamma worked out somewhere. 
As for me, I was the cook; I polished the 
furniture; indeed, I did as well as I could, 
for I was beaten when it wasn't done right." 

"And how did you happen to go away 
alone?" 

"Oh, well, a woman who lived near us 
came back from the station, and was telling 
about a train of emigrants that was going 
off that evening. Then mamma said: 'All 
right, here's a good way to send the boy on 
a journey that may be a long one.' 

"It made her laugh, but I cried and wept. 
I wanted to stay in Paris; I was so happy 
thinking the Prussians were coming there, 
and that I could fight them. I've got a gun, 
you know, and I've been at the garrison and 
seen the soldiers exercising. For a month 
I did it on the pavement by our house when- 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I03 

ever I had a spare moment. Fortunately 
the neighbour woman promised me that the 
Boches would come as far as this; but you 
don't see them often." 

"And didn't your mamma go away with 
you?" 

"No, indeed she didn't. She had her eat- 
ing good and sure in Paris; so she stayed 
there. You can't blame her." 

All this he said in his little clear voice, 
his eyes looking straight at me full of inno- 
cence. 

"And you are happy here?" 

"Oh, very happy, very. I had grand luck 
to catch diphtheria and come here. I don't 
really like to ask the Sister to find me a pic- 
ture-book, she's so busy, I can see that quite 
well; but we talk about the war all the time 
with the comrades. They are very nice. 
They give me some of the chocolate they 
have, and play with me. When I can get 
up perhaps they'll let me drill." 

This last word was uttered with quite a 



104 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

thrill in his voice : it meant his greatest wish 
and hope. 

How relative a thing is happiness I This 
poor child, sick in a hospital, a waif among 
a lot of soldiers, deserted even by his mother, 
only a tragic problem for his future, counts 
himself one of the happy ones of this earth, 
and from now on belongs to them. For an 
instant I remained mute, heart-broken by 
this tale of unutterable misery told in this 
cheerful voice, while the small boy's eyes, 
ever restless, roamed furtively round the 
great room. Suddenly, pointing with his 
finger at the crucifix hanging on the wall, he 
asked me: "Who is that there?' Poor little 
Frenchman of Catholic France! Could he 
have been led hither to St. Dominic's in the 
tragic whirlpool of events only to find him- 
self opposite this cross, and ask that ques- 
tion? Man proposes: God disposes. One 
might say in these days, the world proposes. 
— I talk to my little refugee of his Father 
in Heaven and of Him who on earth loved 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL IO5 

to surround Himself with children pure in 
heart. He literally drank in my words. 
One is very seldom listened to like this in 
ordinary catechism lessons. Truly, one 
would say that a mysterious and puissant 
hand works in these days of travail on the 
newest hearts, hearts that might otherwise 
have escaped the clutch of circumstance. 

"Now, just think," concluded this child, 
with his amazingly mannish airs, "they've 
never talked to me about these things you've 
just told me. And yet I'm seven years old, 
and since I was two — anyway — I've under- 
stood things very well. When I was seven 
years— two years — at five they could have 
explained everything to me. It's all the 
same. I might never have known! You'll 
come back, won't you, madame?" 

Yes, surely, I will come back. Others, 
too, will look out for him, and soon I hope 
this little refugee, brought thus to us by 
the designs of Providence, will have just 
reason to call himself a happy child. 



106 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 



A MODEST LITTLE SOLDIER 

Here is the letter of a father to his son, 
a silent, modest little soldier in one of our 
temporary hospitals, whose name his com- 
rades read with surprise in the papers as 
mentioned in the order of the day of our 
army. Then only was he willing to tell his 
story, the heroic story of a soldier of France 
and one that we can never forget. 

Livrot was ordered to deliver an impor- 
tant order and, although he was severely 
wounded while on the way, he did not feel 
that he had the right to go to the rear. He 
disregarded a terrible wound which needed 
immediate care and faced death which he 
felt close and threatening. 

"I went on just the same," he said simply 
and shyly at this point in the story, "but 
when at last I reached my Captain, I was 
all in; I fainted at his feet." 

He apologised for this unexpected weak- 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL IO7 

ness and was half ashamed of his own cour- 
age, but at my request he was quite willing 
to show me — with permission to use as I 
chose — a letter from his father of which one 
of the other men had told me. 

This letter is so full of sober courage, so 
sincere and vibrant with the noblest affec- 
tion that can exist between father and son, 
that I should lessen its beauty if I did not 
transcribe it exactly, just as it was written 
by that fine and simple soul. 

Montargis, Nov. 11, 1914. 
Dear Son: 

We were not at all surprised to see your name 
in the Gatinais paper, which said that Livrot was 
mentioned in the order of the day. We felt great 
joy. It is an honour. We thank you and we hope 
that your wound will heal as rapidly as possible. 
If you have the happiness to recover, we will go 
together and balance our account with the Boches. 
That is what I would like to do. In spite of what 
you have said, am I not right? Those who are 
fighting suffer — I agree so far — but those who are 
not fighting also suffer in knowing all that is be- 
ing done in Germany to conquer us. You know 
me; together we could strike a good blow. They 



io8 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 



talk much about you in Montargis. We are proud 
of it. Many of your comrades come to see us 
and congratulate you, they even say that you have 
not had all the reward that you deserve. We 
thank you for your sense of your duty. Our 
health is good and I hope yours is the same. Your 
mother and your father and many of the neigh- 
bours send you good wishes and honour you for 
your courage. 

LiVROT, 

Highway Inspector. 

This is what the Head Surgeon of the 
military hospital wrote to this father when 
he read his letter: 

Dear Sir: 

We are proud and happy to have among our 
wounded a soldier who is so courageous and at 
the same time so modest. This morning, on learn- 
ing that your son was mentioned for his gallant 
conduct in the order of the day of our army, I 
allowed myself to replace you and embraced him 
warmly. As soon as his health is re-established 
I intend to present him to his comrades and, in 
spite of his modesty, commend his devotion to duty 
and his brave heart. You may be proud of your 
son, my dear sir, for you have given him the best 
of yourself and of the noble thoughts which I feel 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL IO9 

are in you. Your son showed me your letter, 
which moved me deeply. If you are proud of 
having such a son, we also are proud of having 
fathers capable of such sentiments. Our young 
patient's wound is doing as well as possible. . . . 



OFFICERS AND MEN 

I TOLD you a few days ago with what en- 
thusiasm a certain infantryman spoke of his 

young officer, M. X , who was promoted 

to captain only eleven months ago, and who 
is to-day, because of his courage and mili- 
tary ability, Major and Chevalier of the 
Legion of Honour. Here are the words in 

which Major X himself sends back 

from the front his thanks for all the well- 
earned congratulations on his honours: 

"You may truly say that I owe everything 
to the heroism of my men ; the splendid and 
disinterested courage of these men who work 
modestly at gigantic tasks, in the accom- 
plishment of which we, the officers, are no 
more than spectators. It is they that you 



no IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

reward through us, and to them that your 
congratulations should go." 

France knows well what heroic makers of 
victory she possesses in these officers who 
so modestly declare themselves the spectators 
of their men, and one of the things which 
stirs us most is the mutual admiration of the 
soldier for the officer and of the officer for 
his men. It is a feeling which will bear 
fruit, a promise of success for France, and it 
must increase in both that capacity for en- 
durance and that devotion to duty that this 
strange and terrible struggle demands. It 
must relieve also that anguish of soul which 
comes to men far from home, by making a 
veritable family out of a regiment. And 
where in family life could one find greater 
devotion than that of the Captain of the 
General Staff who, without a thought of his 
shoulder straps, picked up on the battlefield 
one of his men who was badly hurt and car- 
ried him two miles on his back to the hos- 
pital. It was one of Sister Gabrielle's pa- 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 111 

tients who was saved in this way and he 
said as he told his story: 

"A thing like that will never happen to a 
Boche." 

A few months ago it was rare and un- 
usual for a man to owe his life to another. 
Now it is part of our everyday life. I knew 
of two brothers who fought side by side, 
and when one of them, who had risked his 
life to save one of our 75's, fell badly 
wounded, the other threw himself out of the 
trench — without even thinking, as he said 
afterwards, of the terrible danger which 
threatened him on every side — gathered up 
his brother under a hail of bullets, making 
himself a target for the German fire, and 
carried him to a stretcher. He was wounded 
in the eye by a bit of shell and covered with 
blood, but still he slipped off his overcoat in 
the rain of a Northern night to cover the 
shivering body of his younger brother. Such 
are the families of to-day. No more selfish- 
ness, even for the preservation of one's own 



112 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

life; all affection growing closer and finer. 
Never perhaps in France have people loved 
each other as they do in 1914, because never 
have they sacrificed so much to duty. Who 
wrote the verse: 

"There is no great love, except in the shadow of 
a great dream." 

SISTER GABRIELLE'S OFFICE 

In the middle of the ward, behind the 
long row of cots on the right, a low door 
opens into the Sister's office. This office is 
a sort of hall, long and narrow with no 
window but a skylight, looking out only on 
heaven like Sister Gabrielle's own life. On 
a wooden table the big registry book lies 
open with lists of all the wounded received 
and discharged. A crucifix hangs on the 
white wall, and a shelf with a few books 
carefully re-covered with black cloth. The 
clothes hanger shows the only thought of 
herself which has place in Sister Gabrielle's 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL II3 

mind, a spotless white blouse which she slips 
hastily over her blue Sister of Charity uni- 
form for the operating room. Far at the 
end of the room stands a chest with drawers 
marked — "supply of chocolate biscuits for 
the sick," "stockings and underclothes to give 
out" — and on the floor, almost everywhere, 
cavalry pouches, red trousers, tunics to be 
mended, and men's heavy shoes smelling 
strongly of leather. In the midst of all these 
things Sister Gabrielle's young face — ^be- 
tween the wings of her white headdress — is 
like an angelic vision, ready to return again 
to heaven. It is in this room that she stops 
to take breath, at the foot of her crucifix, 
when the days are too hard, and there I 
found her weeping after the death of her 
brother. But from this room she goes back 
to her sick more serene than ever, and more 
tenderly maternal. 



114 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 



THE COMPANY OF THE 
AUDACIOUS 

I HAVE just seen again at St. Dominic the 
little soldier who told me such touching 
stories about his "comrades," He begged 
for permission to return to the front — "as 
soon as possible" — and he is now back from 
that second and terrible journey with a new 
wound. He is very gay and full of spirit — 
delighted with the hospital, the nurses, the 
wounded, and everything else. I have a 
fancy, however, that this particular little in- 
fantryman has never lacked spoiling and 
petting at home. To the circle that gathers 
around his bed he protests eagerly and with 
justice against the shade of contempt with 
which people speak of his corps, the Fif- 
teenth. Certain mistakes in the beginning, 
promptly and cruelly expiated, have been a 
hundred times atoned for. The Fifteenth 
corps now inspires the most chivalrous devo- 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL II5 

tion. I know one young officer, twice 
wounded, who, because of his knowledge of 
English, was offered a place on the staff 
of General Castelnau. He refused it, saying 
that he was not willing, during hostilities, 
to exchange his post as lieutenant in active 
service in a corps slightly in disrepute, for a 
position of less danger and apparently of 
more honour. To-day my little infantry- 
man, in a voice quivering with emotion, was 
telling what he had seen, and I stopped to 
listen to one of his stories as I passed. 

At the front, down there, he had made 
friends with a recruit sixteen years old whose 
father had been killed at the beginning of 
the war, and who had enlisted, as he said, 
simply "because I know how hard it is to 
lose one's father, and I want to serve in the 
place of some father of a family." 

He seems to have been a curious little sol- 
dier; always with a great pipe in the corner 
of his mouth and always on the lookout for 
anything that touched his proteges, the fa- 



Il6 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

thers of families. He watched over them 
and in every possible way guarded them 
from danger. Every time that one of them 
was told off for perilous service, the little 
orphan, who could not bear to see them die, 
would offer or even force himself in to go 
in their place. But — as he knew the regi- 
ment well — if a young man was called on he 
never stirred but muttered between his teeth : 
"I value my skin as much as you do yours," 
and kept on peacefully smoking his pipe. 
He was a child who had risen to this power 
of absolute self-sacrifice because he had been 
able to feel truly and profoundly one great 
grief. 

"In our regiment in the Fifteenth corps," 
said the young infantryman, "a company has 
been formed called 'the Company of the 
Audacious.' It is commanded by a gallant 
captain and made up of volunteers who 
agree to undertake the most dangerous tasks. 
One night the company was given orders to 
cut the wires which formed the outer barrier 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL llj 

of a German trench. One by one they 
crawled through the grass and bushes to the 
terrible neighbourhood in which they had to 
work. Suddenly a quantity of bombs 
thrown by the enemy, revealed as clearly as 
if by daylight the company at their adven- 
turous work, and well-aimed bullets rained 
on them from all sides. The Captain, lying 
on the ground among his men, said to 
them: 

" 'My children, they have our range; 
whether we go back or forward, death is 
certain. It will be better to stay and finish 
our work and die as brave men, and as we 
cannot hide any longer, if you want to, we 
will sing the "Marseillaise." ' 

"Immediately the national hymn rose 
around him mingled with the groans of the 
dying. The regiment behind heard the song, 
and the sound of the fusillade, and under- 
stood. The splendid contagion of that rap- 
ture — that enthusiasm for death — seized 
them; that thing which *the greatest of 



Il8 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

philosophers will never be able to explain 
or understand.' Nothing could hold the 
men, and for an hour the whole regiment 
was part of the Company of the Audacious. 

"The next day the official notice con- 
tained this line : 

" 'At X we took a German trench.' " 

MEMORIES 

I HAVE just heard some very touching 
stories from one of the many French 
women who were able in a day to reach a 
height of devotion and courage attainable 
by them only because beneath their everyday 
life of women of the world, they have al- 
ways kept the same high standard of duty. 
This one of whom I speak, who had been a 
frequent visitor to our hospitals, was sent 
at the time of mobilisation with several 

others to open a hospital in S , a city 

now occupied by the enemy. I asked her 
what she remembered of that long and ter- 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL IIQ 

rible struggle and will try to repeat her 
story. 

"To my great regret," she said, "I had 
to let the other nurses go on two days ahead, 
and I shall never forget the journey that I 
took to reach S in the midst of the effer- 
vescence of the mobilisation. The only 
woman travelling, I felt that I, myself, was 
also a soldier going to his post, a feeling 
which was both exciting and steadying. In 
passing through Rheims I saw a regiment of 
Alsatians packed in cattle cars. The men 
who composed it had come by many routes 
and through many dangers to fight with their 
French brothers. Most of them did not even 
know the beloved language of their fathers. 
A French officer gave them orders in Ger- 
man. They had already cheered their col- 
ours and the harsh accents of the enemy's 
tongue around our flag expressed so well the 
double tragedy of Alsace, that of forty-four 
years ago, and that of to-day, which will be 
a glorious contrast. In the corridor of my 



120 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

carriage some anti-militarists were talking 
openly of their opinions, and with fine in- 
consistency declaring themselves quite ready 
to risk their lives in this 'necessary and 
salutary war.' All along the route that won- 
derful spirit which was to save the country 
was all about me, calm yet thrilling with a 
glowing life that one felt was inextinguish- 
able. 

"At the end of the journey I heard for 
the first time the rumbling of cannon, and it 
was to the accompaniment of that sound 
which continued without a pause that we 
worked to transform into a hospital the 
large girls' school which had been turned 
over to us. My companions had already 
done wonders, but what a mass of detail 
had still to be thought of in the midst of 
such consuming anxiety. In a few days our 
preparations were complete and we waited, 
idle, for the wounded to come. It was pe- 
culiarly trying to have nothing to do and 
time to think of what those words mean, to 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 121 

wait for the wounded. To wait until those 
scenes of carnage for which the declaration 
of war is the terrible signal should happen 
close to us; to wait for the pitiful human 
wrecks escaped from death to come back to 
us from those fields of suffering. 

"Our thoughts were racked by the horrible 
realities that we could not see and yet knew 
to be so near. Inaction depressed and un- 
nerved us and yet how gladly would we have 
put off forever the moment when our help 
would be needed. Alas, that moment was 
not long in coming. On August 14th the 
wounded began to arrive, and I realised how 
splendidly equal to their task my helpers 
were. Several of them had already seen ac- 
tive service in Morocco, Greece or Bulgaria 
and their morale was even more valuable 
than their talents and training. 

"The atmosphere of S was electrified. 

We felt the line of fire and iron close around 
us. We were told that one hundred Ger- 
man cannon balls had fortunately only 



122 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

killed four and wounded twelve people. For 
the first time enormous aeroplanes flew over 
the cit}'. They seemed heavier than our own 
and were painted a darker colour. A few 
bombs were dropped. Each day we saw 
great numbers of autobuses loaded with pro- 
visions for the army rush past at full speed, 
going we knew not where. The mystery that 
enveloped us was most oppressive. An In- 
spector coming to see us, stumbled without 
knowing it into the middle of the General 
StaflF. He saw fift}^ or sixty officers and was 
told that he was between six army corps. 
Before letting him go they required his word 
of honour not to tell where this happened. 

"August 15th. — Mass in the open air. 
The deep voice of the cannon sounds nearer. 
Every one sang in chorus the creed and the 
canticle, 'Have pity, O God,' and many 
officers and soldiers received the communion. 
WTiat one feels at such a time lies in the 
depth of the heart and cannot be expressed. 
The badly wounded have begun to arrive 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I23 

and in one day our hospital is almost full. 

"August 20th. — General X, commanding 
an army corps, and his staff visited us as 
they passed through. The general was 
cheerful and spoke to the men in a comfort- 
ing, fatherly way. He told them not to 
worry. 'Whatever happens we will end by 
shaking hands with our Russian allies in 
Berlin.' One of his officers took particular 
interest in the hospital and when he was 
brought back to us three days later on a 
stretcher, I was surprised to hear this pa- 
tient whom I thought a stranger, saying: *I 
did not expect, Madame, the pleasure of 
seeing you again so soon.' 

"The 23rd of August was the day after a 

great battle — that in the wood of St. H , 

and the wounded were brought in in quanti- 
ties. About noon came a general whom we 
placed as best we could in a little room. He 
did not want us to give him any special 
care, though he was suffering terribly, and 
was anxious only about two of his officers. 



124 ^N A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

By a curious chance a soldier of his division 
was brought in a few moments later, and the 
general was eager to learn from him what 
had happened to some of his 'children.' He 
insisted upon seeing the soldier at once. 

" The Major^' he asked. 

" 'Dead, sir.' 

" The Captain? 

" 'Dead, sir.' 

"Four times the question was repeated 
with the same sad answer. The general 
bowed his head and asked no more, but we 
saw the tears on his strong face and stole out 
of the little room in silence, as if we were 
afraid of waking from their glorious sleep 
the men whose names had just been called. 

"A Lieutenant de V , who came to us 

with a flesh wound on his head, a ball had 
glanced from his skull, told us that his regi- 
ment had gone out with one thousand two 
hundred and sixty men and only sixty-seven 
were left. He refused to stay out of danger, 
to go back to the depot of his corps, or even 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 125 

to report his wound, but only asked us to 
dress his head, and started out the next 
morning alone to try to find his regiment. 
Nothing could persuade him to give up the 
dangerous plan, and heaven knows what be- 
came of him. 

"August 24th. — It was evident that the 

situation in S was becoming more and 

more serious, and my responsibilities weighed 
heavily on my shoulders. That afternoon I 
heard that the military hospital was being 
emptied. Should we do the same, or should 
we stay"? I felt deeply that the lives of 
those around me depended upon this deci- 
sion. I asked advice of the Dean of S , 

who had seen 1870, and he was quite de- 
cided. 'Empty your hospital; go yourself 
as soon as possible; do you want your 
wounded bombarded or massacred? Do you 
want to be forced with your nurses into the 
hospital service of the enemy for the rest of 
the war?' 

"That decided me. Nurse Prussians, un- 



126 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

der orders, like a German woman'? Never! I 
went to the station and they promised me 
after some difficulty just space enough on 
the last train that evening. The railroad 
officials reserved a car for our personal use. 
Then I went back to the hospital and told 
the others of my decision. They begged me 
to change and some of them asked to stay, 
or if the hospital was closed, to be sent to 
the front. I told them that places were re- 
served for them in the train with the 
wounded, but they all refused to go, and 
my responsibilities were made heavier by 
their courage. 

"We began to dress our poor wounded for 
their journey, taking them from the rest that 
they had bought so dearly. To avoid excit- 
ing them we told them that they were being 
moved to make room for some more severely 
wounded, so it was 'all right,' and there was 
not a complaint about the change which cost 
them such torture. While we were hurry- 
ing to prepare them, more wounded arrived. 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 127 

and then still more. They had to be packed 
wherever we could put them in the hall and 
theatre of the school. One poor little second 
lieutenant, very badly hurt, asked if he 
might not stay; he was hardly twenty, with 
the face of a boy, and he accepted my de- 
cision with the obedience of a child. I felt 
myself in his mother's place, and thought of 
her when I advised him to go. He had lost 
all his uniform and we wrapped him up in 
an old brown overcoat which had been given 
to the hospital, under which he quite disap- 
peared. We put an old hat on his head and 
I wrote 'officer' on a label, which I sewed on 
his chest, in spite of much protestation, for 
he wanted no privileges. 

"Once ready, he seemed so weak and ex- 
hausted that I provided him with two in- 
jections of camphorated oil for the journey. 
He could give them to himself or get help 
from a comrade if he was too faint. At nine 
the carriages came, and the painful start 
was accomplished. Was this horrible night- 
mare a reality? The sound of the departing 



128 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

wheels struck into our hearts. A moment 
later as we were taking a little food, a 
Colonel of the Staff brought us a motor full 
of wounded. He had found them in the 
ditches all along the road, and some of them 
were delirious. He took them straight on to 
the train, with a permit, for no one could 
now drive through the streets, as the bridges 
were all mined. 

"We had now to arrange for the most se- 
riously wounded. The doctors, whose devo- 
tion had never for an instant flagged, had 
refused to let these go and some of them 
were dying. We could not bear to desert 
them, and yet from every side I was given 
the same counsel, 'Go, empty your hospital. 
Your wounded will be safer in the civil 
hospital than under the Red Cross.' I called 
the doctors together again and they prom- 
ised to give particular care to those whom I 
was leaving behind. At ten o'clock the cure 
came to confess them and administer the 
communion. There were still arrangements 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 129 

to be made about their admission to the 
civil hospital, so I wanted to go there. I 
had the password, but after eleven o'clock 
it was of no use, as no one was allowed in 
the streets. With one of the nurses I walked 
for miles along the Meuse to avoid passing 
through the city. We heard the explosion 
of some of the mines which were blowing up 
the bridges. The good man who went with 
us had seen his father shot in '70; he himself, 
a baby, had been tossed about by the Uhlans, 
and he begged us over and over again not 
to go. 

" 'You would not desert us now; that 
would mean that the Prussians were coming 
back. You won't go'?' 

"At last we reached the hospital and saw 
that heavenly, peaceful sight in time of war, 
the white headdress of the Sisters ready to 
help all who are in trouble. Our wounded 
would be expected at dawn. As we went 
back we saw far away in the dark town the 
red glow of a fire. I heard cries from the 



130 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

same quarter. The machine guns were in 
place, ready for the Uhlans. How dreadful 
it all was! 

"We reached home at two o'clock and 
found the others still stoically on duty. At 
three o'clock came the sound of carriages in 
the courtyard and we ourselves helped to 
load them with our poor wounded. It was 
the dying that we were sending this time. 
But we may at least have secured them a 
peaceful end, sheltered from the terrors of 
the bombardment and the arrival of Prus- 
sian soldiers around their deathbeds and 
all the horrors that threatened them so near 
the lines. It was such reasons alone that 
kept my decision from wavering. 

"What anguish we felt I We got into 
the last wagon to accompany them to the 
hospital. During our passage through the 
town, half-dressed people with haggard faces 
came out of their doors or appeared at the 
windows along our route. The least noise 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I3I 

made them think the Prussians had come. 
"For the last time we went into our hos- 
pital, and with aching hearts made once 
more the round of the great empty rooms. 
What an amount of wasted effort was rep- 
resented by those abandoned preparations. 
We took all the men's arms and military 
equipment with us and at last got into an 
ambulance and the porter took us to the sta- 
tion. There we learned that the communi- 
cations with S were broken. There 

were no more trains — it was the end. They 
told us that the commanding officer could 
perhaps requisition an automobile for our 
use. We went to him, but he was sick and 
had lost his voice and had nothing to give 
us but one bicycle. Then we thought of the 
general who had come to visit us. He had 
chosen the house of one of the chief sup- 
porters of our hospital for his quarters with 
his staff. We went there, but, alas, there 
was only emptiness and silence, for the gen- 



132 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

eral had already betaken himself farther 

away. At any moment S might become 

a part of the very front of the huge battle. 

"We made up our minds to make use of 
our good horse, 'Tirot,' as long as his 
strength should last. His driver, however, 
who was afraid that he would not be able to 
rejoin his family after the bridges had been 
blown up, declared that he, himself, was 
going to leave us for good. One of us, who 
has the faculty of making quick and happy 
decisions, took the reins, and was ready to 
drive our cart through the thousand difficul- 
ties of the way. Our destination was uncer- 
tain. We would go in the direction of 
Rheims as long as 'Tirot' was willing to 
drag us. 

"At last we started across this marvel- 
lously beautiful country, covered at that 
moment by a population of strangers, who 
were the incarnation either of war or fear. 
We passed through the whole system of de- 
fence. The Eleventh corps was there and a 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 133 

part of the Sixteenth ready for the action 
which was to take place that very evening. 
Batteries were hidden behind every hedge. 
Looking across the fields, we could see rows 
of men's heads in the trenches. As we went 
along we distributed to the men the arms 
and supplies which filled our cart. Some ar- 
tillerymen asked us for some sacred medals. 
The road was blocked by the pitiful crowd 
of fugitives. They drove carts loaded with 
old men, children, household furniture and 
the greatest variety of things. In the midst 
of the unbelievable dust every one travelled 
along slowly, very slowly, saving their 
horses, so as to get the longest possible dis- 
tance out of them. We got down at all the 
hills in order to rest 'Tirot.' A number of 
unfortunate people who were on foot with- 
out any kind of cart, carried heavy bundles 
on their backs. I noticed one young woman 
almost exhausted, who was soon to become 
a mother. There was a child of about two 
years old in the wheelbarrow which she was 



134 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

pushing, and another ran beside her holding 
to her skirts. She was all alone. Nowhere 
did we see any men. All these wretched 
people, torn brutally from the homes which 
in the absence of their fathers or husbands 
would have offered protection to their lone- 
liness, were thrown out on the world without 
any support or any safeguard. What will 
become of them*? The soldiers, themselves, 
who were marching in the opposite direction 
on their way to the firing line and who had 
cares enough of their own, could not see 
them without being moved. I heard one of 
them mutter, 'It's hard, all the same.* 

"Our poor 'Tirot' was very tired. We fed 
I him a little every now and then along the 

way, for we did not know what else to do. 
To rest him some of us travelled for two 
kilometres in a motor loaded with meat, 
from which we finally got down saturated 
with unpleasant smells. We rested in a vil- 
lage and a zealous young doctor brought us 
a raw leg of mutton as provender for our 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 135 

journey. We heard that at S while we 

were still busy over our wounded, the first 
patrol of the Uhlans had entered the town 
and that eighteen of them had been killed. 

"We had to begin our journey again on 
foot, for the horse could go no farther. 
From time to time we gave him a little water 
in a bandage box. A battle was going on, 
it seems, only twelve kilometres away, and 
we heard the cannon continuously from that 
direction. 

"We reached the top of a little ridge and 
sat down at the edge of a field of wheat to 
catch our breath. At our feet the immense 
movement of the troops went on vaguely 
far and near. The regimental wagons and 
the medical corps passed one after the other. 
You would have thought that they were 
huge colonies of human ants hastening to- 
wards some mysterious goal. Suddenly 
three German aeroplanes flew over us, spy- 
ing out the movements of the armies. Seated 
on that little hill in our white nurses' uni- 



136 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

forms, we became at once a very convenient 
target, so that we were obliged to go on 
again. It was ten hours since we had left 
S and so far we had only covered twen- 
ty-five kilometres. 

"We were going through the beautiful 
woods of Mont Dieu, and there, in striking 
contrast, the quiet was profound. All the 
peace of the evening had taken refuge in the 
forest. The peasants, who were leaving their 
homes, did not disturb it, but under the dim 
splendour of the great leafy shadows they 
marched silently along followed by their 
long flocks, until they made you think of the 
old patriarchs in the happy times of univer- 
sal peace. But these moments of respite 
were short. As we came out of the woods 
we met an officer who secured a horse and a 
bicycle for us and sent ahead word about us 
to the next station, where three automobiles 
were very kindly placed at our disposal. In 

that way we finally reached V . We had 

been travelling since dawn and arrived at the 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 137 

close of the day. It was impossible to find 
a single free room in any hotel, but for- 
tunately some hospitable people took care 
of us and, military to the last, found quar- 
ters for us with some people of the village. 
We were looking forward to the prospect of 
enjoying a little rest there while we waited 
for orders from Paris, but on the second 
morning we learned that the town was to be 
evacuated and that we must leave in a hurry. 
I asked the authorities for some means of 
transportation. They sent us an automobile 
much too small to hold us all. To my great 
anxiety I had to leave my nurses behind me 
for a while, but I could come back for them 
that very evening. My chauffeur under- 
stood the value of time in these days of in- 
vasion, but he had to moderate his speed in 
going through the village of Souain, all pre- 
pared for defence and destined to become in 
a few days the scene of that hard struggle, 
so bloody and so glorious for one of our 
regiments. Already on that very evening we 



138 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

ran into chains stretched across the streets, 
and we were challenged at every street cor- 
ner. That was our very last sight of what 
was soon to be the field of battle." 

Stories of this kind are like scraps of the 
gigantic strife which, blown by the battle 
winds, reach even to those fortunate parts 
of the country that are sheltered from the 
horrible devastation and immediate fear. 
We listen and say nothing. Silence is the 
fervent homage called forth by the courage 
and all the inexpressible feelings aroused 
by such memories. 

Little children of 1914, you must listen 
later on, without saying anything; you must 
devoutly listen to the "true stories," ter- 
rible and glorious, made up of danger, of 
heroism and of tears, which are being pre- 
pared for you in every home in France. 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I39 



NEWS FROM THE MECHINS 

It was understood that the Mechins 
would write me about their sad voyage 
home. Poor people, I saw them crowd into 
the third-class railway carriage where all 
around them were young soldiers of their 
son's age who had been wounded, but who 
had recovered and were going home to their 
lucky parents. The Mechins left in sorrow 
from the same station at which they had ar- 
rived two months before with hearts so full 
of hope. At dusk as they climbed sadly into 
the great brilliant express train, their son's 
lonely grave was sinking into darkness under 
the shadow of the pines. A tri-colour ribbon 
tied to the cross drooped in the dampness of 
the November night. But the Mechins are 
French peasants in the best sense of the 
word; possessing beside their deep Christian 
faith, that peaceful balance of soul and body 
which is the result of the healthy life in the 



140 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

fields. They have also the touch of fatalism 
which teaches them to say in the face of 
trouble, "Well, since we can do nothing 
about it — " Above all, they feel a fine and 
constant sense of responsibility to the earth, 
and have the habit of putting aside even the 
greatest sorrows to meet a demand that can- 
not wait, and which calls them to the work 
of each season. 

All this was in the letter which Pere 
Mechin wrote to me and in which was en- 
closed, as a sign of respect, a visiting card 
carefully printed, "Mechin, farmer." Fine 
souls with a proud title. I shall probably 
never see the Mechins again, but the letter I 
shall always keep. 

"Madame: I have the honour to tell you 
that we reached home at six in the evening 
after a journey of thirty hours. All our 
children and grandchildren were waiting for 
the arrival of the diligence. How many 
tears were shed with ours I It is hard for us 
to be comforted for the loss of our beloved 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I4I 

child, but we must conquer our grief so that 
we can do our duty as working people. As 
I said to my family, it is a duty more than 
ever, now that the little one has died, to de- 
fend the soil that we are cultivating. Poor, 
dear child, his face is always before our 
eyes. 

"I end, dear lady, in begging you to ac- 
cept our thanks, and in sending you a warm 
handclasp of friendship. My wife, my chil- 
dren and my grandchildren join me. 

"Mechin, Pere. 
"Decorated in 1870. 
"Please remind Sister Gabrielle of her 
promise to have a wreath of laurel put on 
the grave of Private Mechin. We do not 
want them to put anything else." 

No, truly, nothing else should be put 
there. 

Strew not upon this urn you close 
The flower of Aphrodite, the rose. 
For love came not his way. 



142 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

Nor even gently o'er it shower 
The immortelle, old age's flower. 
He lived but for a day. 

But lest men feel that to his shade 
All flowers have been denied. 
Pluck for him laurel from the woods around, 
*Twas for his land he died.^ 



A LAMENT 

Sister Gabrielle pointed out to me to- 
day one of the wounded who was growing 
worse. Absorbed by so many operations she 
could not wait by that bed of pain. I took 
her place there, and can you imagine the la- 
ment full of sadness and tender with an in- 
expressible tenderness which came from the 
lips of that young man"? 

"Poor France, how your children suffer! 
Poor, poor France." 

He was pitying her for the martyrdom 
which she is suffering through her own flesh 

^ The Phoenician Women, adapted by G. Rivollet. Act 
IV, Scene I. 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I43 

and blood. How completely he felt that he 
was her son. And certainly she has never 
been more gloriously, more cruelly or more 
tenderly a mother than she is to-day. Her 
care for her soldier children reaches to the 
smallest hut of her land. We think of them, 
we work for them, everywhere, every day 
uninterruptedly. There is nothing like the 
pity which they inspire. It touches the very 
bottom of your heart and makes you suffer 
not with a sympathetic but with a personal 
sorrow. It haunts you and follows you 
everywhere. It is indeed the national soul 
of France which shudders and weeps in 
every one of us, which ceaselessly implores 
relief, at the cost of every sacrifice of her 
heroic and unhappy children. 

SOME LETTERS 

Here are some letters from abroad, which 
hail France as once more the great nation of 
the past. Ah I That does indeed do one 



144 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

good after so often bringing back from 
abroad the bitter memory of the hardly dis- 
guised contempt felt towards us beyond our 
frontiers. "Our ties with France are com- 
ing to mean to us all that is dearest and most 
sacred," the Marquise X writes from Rome. 
And here are letters from our friends, the 
English, always calm, even in their heroism, 
and sound in their judgment. 

September 3rd. 
Naturally I can not talk to you, my dear madam, 
of anything but this terrible war. Our people are 
slow to begin; but you will see that they are 
equally slow to give up what they take hold of. 
When "the spirit of battle" has once entered into 
us we will go on to the very end. It is a splendid 
sight to see how our men fight, and perhaps our 
little force — which, besides, will grow larger very 
soon — will help toward the happy result. On both 
sides the losses will certainly be terrible, but par- 
ticularly on the German side. Nevertheless, we 
must brave everything and prepare ourselves for 
every sacrifice both of a private and a public kind 
so that we may escape the Teutonic peril. My 
daughter is busy in the hospital, but she would 
prefer to go to France in one of the ships with 
the troops. It is truly splendid to think that our 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I45 

two nations, so often enemies in the past, are to- 
day fighting side by side in this most critical hour 
of their history. Good-bye, and may we meet 
again once more in happier days. 

November 10th. 
I have been so fearfully busy at the war depart- 
ment that until now I have not been able to find 
the time to answer your interesting letter. I work 
for twelve hours every day, including Simdays, 
and when I do get home all I can do is to go to 
bed, dead from fatigue. To-day, however, I have 
come to the seashore for twenty-four hours' rest 
and that has enabled me to have the pleasure of 
writing to you. What a time of gloomy anxiety 
we are going through ! I hope that your wounded 
are getting better and that you have good news 
from those who are still fighting. In the midst of 
your own family troubles it should be a cause of 
great pride and of consolation to you to feel that 
the whole world has its eyes fixed on your com- 
patriots and that it knows that they are fighting 
even better, if that is possible, than they ever 
fought before — with all the old dash which be- 
longs peculiarly to them and which has made them 
famous in history and also with a new tenacity 
which I would describe, if you will let me, as 
rather English. You have in Jofi're a great leader. 
He and our own General French have curious like- 
nesseSj moral and even physical, and we like to 



146 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

point them out. So far as I can judge the Ger- 
mans are failing completely in their successive 
plans of going to Paris and to Calais. We can 
congratulate ourselves mutually on these defeats. 
The way in which they come back again and again 
to the attack brings them to certain deaths and 
even if the Allies suffer great losses^ the Germans 
will meet with incalculable and irreparable ones. 
As to how long the horrible war will last^ how 
can I tell you anything? Nobody can know any- 
thing about it. If things go on the way they are 
going at present, it will die out of itself by the 
exhaustion of Germany. The result, whether more 
or less near, will depend a good deal on what is 
going to be done by the Russians, whose millions 
of men are j ust beginning to really move. But you 
as well as I, we must both "possess our souls in 
patience" and forbid ourselves to allow our 
thoughts to dwell imnecessarily on the horror of 
the slaughter. It is better to save our strength 
for work. 

Here we are waiting for some wounded soldiers 
and my daughter has a great deal to do in getting 
the house ready. We shall also have some con- 
valescent officers in need of the open air and those 
who may have been mentally deranged by their 
terrible experiences. Once more I beg of you, let 
us force ourselves to look forward and to think 
of the better times which are coming. 

C. R . 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I47 

And here are some letters from our own 
side, and from what indeed is particularly 
our own side, those fields of French heroism 
where, behind a veil of mystery which we 
must respect, the army that is saving us is 
manoeuvring. This is from one of our best 
officers, who so writes to his wife that he 
makes it possible for her to follow, almost 
day by day, his hard campaign life : 

September 25th. 
I am scribbling this letter to you during the 
heaviest bombardment that I have suffered so far. 
The Germans are trying with their shells to drive 
us from this village which we have held for eight 
days in spite of all their efforts. Shells of very 
large calibre rain with a deafening noise on the 
shattered farms and set on fire the few which are 
still left standing. At this moment our life is like 
a penny tossed in the air, and what will happen 
is so much a matter of chance that no one's heart 
beats any the faster for it. We have just finished 
a game of bridge and I can assure you that it was 
not all this which made us stop it. The men are 
just going to eat their soup; they are waiting for 
the end of the tornado to go and retrieve those 
of their soup kettles that haven't been tipped over. 
Perhaps this is the forerunner of a German at- 



148 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

tack. So much the better. An attack — wherever 
it comes from — would be a change from this ex- 
asperating condition of waiting face to face with 
each other for days, and which can not last. After 
the Marne, we need another victory to free our 
Northern frontier. May we soon have it. 

September 29th. 
After some sharp disturbances, it seems to me 
as if to-night there was going to be a few moments' 
calm. I'm hurrying to take advantage of it with 
you. Our position is maintained in the ruined 
village which we captured by a night attack on 
the evening of the ISth, lost on the 14th toward 
noon, recaptured by another night attack on the 
15 th, and since then have held in spite of an un- 
believable bombardment. It is telling you enough 
to say that we are in a part of the great battle 
where the struggles of the two sides to gain the 
ground in front neutralize and counterbalance each 
other. The Germans do this poor burned and dev- 
astated village the honour of treating it like a 
fort. These deluges of iron and fire fortunately 
produce more fear than harm, but they are, above 
all, a severe test of morale. Our regiment is win- 
ning a fine reputation for itself in the army for 
keenness and tenacity, and I imderstand they are 
thinking of congratulating it for this officially. 
Our units, which are now made up almost entirely 
of reservists, are behaving well. Ah! there is no 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I49 

longer the fire and youthful dash that our regu- 
lar companies had at the beginning of the war. 
The men are slow to manoeuvre, they think a little 
too much about eating and sleeping, but they are 
determined, tenacious, firm under fire, profoundly 
anxious to expel the invader, and bearing up well 
under the prodigious fatigue of our life. We have 
neither undressed nor taken off our shoes for nearly 
three weeks, and in the course of that time we 
spent five or six days in a heavy rain in the woods, 
crouching in the bottom of chalky trenches, from 
which we came out in the morning in a condition 
which you can imagine! There is no question, 
naturally, of our having our horses, who remain 
with our orderlies five or six kilometres in the 
rear. The provisioning on the whole is carried out 
very well. The wagons come up during the night 
to within one thousand five hundred to two thou- 
sand metres of the line. We send squads back to 
them and in the morning the companies find that 
they have almost all they need. Thanks to the 
smoking ruins, the men can do their cooking with- 
out attracting the attention of the lookouts or the 
aviators of the enemy, but if ever that attention 
is attracted we get a hail of "plums." 

There is nothing to buy in this country, so com- 
pletely deserted and ravaged. When we dislodge 
some frightened peasant from the ruins of a cellar 
we hurry him to the rear. We buy or kill the few 
rare animals which are still left in the stables in 



150 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

order to use to the limit what the country still has 
to give, and at any rate to make it useless to the 
enemy. Here we only find some starved pigeons 
for poultry and some frightened cows whose milk 
we struggle for, and once in a great while a few 
potatoes and some cauliflower and carrots. They 
say that the Germans are in serious need of food 
and that they live only on canned things. They 
hold on just the same and won't let themselves be 
pushed out. That will be done nevertheless. The 
most terrible thing is the 'prospect of a hard win- 
ter's campaign. The few days of rain last week 
gave us a sharp foretaste of it. 

The thought of you never leaves me, any more 
than the wallet in which I have your photograph 
and that of the children, and also the prayer to 
the Virgin "for those who love one another and 
are separated." But my courage does not desert 
me either; does it not spring from our love.'' May 
God do as he wills with us, but may he always 
bless us, together or apart. 

Neighbourhood of Ypres, 

November 8th, 1914. 
We have just undergone the most awful day of 
fighting which we have so far lived through. For 
five consecutive days and nights my battalion has 
been on the firing line attacked, attacking, fired at 
and firing, but unluckily cannonaded above all. 
The Boches have terrible heavy artillery, and in 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I5I 

addition they are turning against us all their enor- 
mous equipment from the siege of Antwerp, and 
pouring out their ammunition so that we wonder 
how they are able to feed at such a rate so many 
fiery mouths. Even at S we did not under- 
go such a deluge of iron nor especially so con- 
tinuous a stream of it. These four days of fight- 
ing have been frightful in every way and they are 
far from being over; but this morning before day- 
light we were withdrawn from under fire so that 
we might be reorganised. Judging by the furious 
energy which is being put forth on both sides at 
this moment, it would seem as if this must be their 
last kick, at which the emperor has come to assist 
in person. But, no, I do not believe any longer that 
this is so. The trenches and wire entanglements 
appear again on both sides. They mean once 
more that condition of deadlock, front to front. 
After twenty-four or forty-eight hours of waiting 
we shall enter this furnace again and the result 
of the gigantic strife will be reached — God knows 
when! What will life in the trenches be like with 
rain and cold? Just think that, during these fear- 
ful bombardments, we are kept hours and hours 
crouching in the trenches, backs against the wall, 
legs dravra up, heads sunk between our shoulders, 
like oxen passively waiting for the blow of the 
hatchet that will finish them — except for the look- 
outs, who, with their heads above the edge, have 
the duty of watching the ground in front so as 



152 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

to be sure that the enemy does not try to advance, 
and except also when we ourselves receive the or- 
der to advance from the trenches in spite of the 
storm to throw ourselves into an attack. But at 
that dreadful moment the artillery of the enemy 
notices what we are doing and redoubles its fierce- 
ness in company with the rifles and the machine 
guns. Oh, those machine guns! 

Near Ypres, 
November 19th. 

I have been fighting continuously since the be- 
ginning of the war, but the battle around Ypres 
during the last two weeks reached the maximum 
of intensity, conceivable and inconceivable. The 
efforts on both sides are pushed almost to what is 
impossible; gigantic, as far as the offensive of the 
Germans is concerned and no less so in our de- 
fensive. From time to time they tried to with- 
draw us from the first line so as to give us a few 
hours' respite. But as soon as we arrived in our 
"relief quarters" they recalled us to the front. 
That is what happened to me in the evening the 
day before yesterday at the moment when, with 
my battalion, I was occupying a farm where I 
hoped to catch my breath. They recalled me ur- 
gently to go into an action where for the sixth 
time I lost in a few hours half of my command. 

"Your battalion," writes the general under 
whose orders I had been placed in thanking me 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 153 

this morning, "has shown a devotion above all 
praise." 

That is perhaps just what may happen to me 
again this evening, now that I am once more back 
at that same farm to reorganise my command there 
again. Anyway, on account of the frightful ar- 
tillery of the Boches, you can not get rest any- 
where behind the lines. The "big pots" with 
their terrible explosives follow you everywhere, 
showering dismay and conflagration on all the 
roofs within a radius of ten kilometres. The noise 
of these is continuous from sunrise to sunset. It 
is carried to the ultimate limits, the "Colossal" 
which happily breaks down before our colossal 
tenacity. "Strange people, those people there," 
as the song says — emphasising militarism wher- 
ever it is brutal and savage, aggravating it by 
stratagems, by treachery, by unbelievable deceit, 
while we, with our dark uniforms standing out 
against all the green backgrounds, express the nat- 
ural carelessness of a race which is a little too self- 
confident when it comes to the preparation for pos- 
sibilities which do not seem to it likely to be real- 
ised immediately. 

All that is not meant to be bitter, believe me. 
What will win finally is the combination of hero- 
ism and tenacity, and from that point of view we, 
on the contrary, see only things that are consol- 
ing. Frenchmen "tenacious even in inaction/' 
that's what no one would ever have believed. And 



154 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

yet it is impossible to deny such a quality to men 
like mine who have just spent six successive days 
in the trenches without budging from there day or 
night, their feet in water up to their ankles, eating 
only once in every twenty-four hours the provi- 
sions prepared during the night four kilometres 
away, and undergoing without a pause this fright- 
ful and murderous racket. 



Near Ypres, 
November 28th. 
At the moment, wonderful to relate! we are 
twenty kilometres behind the lines, having a rest 
for three or four days. This is something that 
has not happened to us before since the very be- 
ginning of the campaign! We are certainly mak- 
ing the most of it, stuffing ourselves with good 
food and good wine and regaining as much strength 
as possible in order to use it up again right away 
in new battles. They withdrew us from the firing 
line four days ago on the east front of Ypres, 
where we had ourselves relieved the English, and 
they are reorganising us here with recruits whom 
we take into our ranks and by promotions and ap- 
pointments, and from the wounded who returned 
cured from the rear and in every way they can — 
and then they will do whatever they like with us, 
sending us back into the Belgian trenches, or ship- 
ping us off perhaps to some new zone of fighting. 
The attempt on Ypres has been a failure for the 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 153 

Boches. We wonder if they are going to try an- 
other or whether if, through fear of the Russians, 
they are going to decide at last to take away their 
men from the French front where during four 
months they have accumulated such formidable re- 
sources. 

This rest, as you will understand from my 
earlier letter, we have fairly earned. The month 
of November was the most terrible of the cam- 
paign; we have had bloody battles on every side. 
My division, which had been brought here in 
autos, was used to reinforce every part of the 
front as fast as the formidable attacks of the 
Boches against Ypres developed. Our battalions, 
on account of their well-known steadiness, were 
called and recalled, sent hither and thither, to at- 
tack, to defend, to take trenches, to retake them, 
to organise them or to give an example of stoical 
calm under a bombardment. One day one of my 
companies, without firing a gun, lost seventy-six 
men in its trench, their backs bent beneath the 
shells which must be endured "just the same," 
ready to stay to the last man, in that trench which 
their orders were not to give up and from which 
after nightfall the survivors were still able to re- 
pulse a violent attack. That's modern warfare! 
Twice my battalion has lost half of its members 
and has had its ranks refilled by reinforcements 
from the rear, but everywhere it has received the 
congratulations and thanks of the chiefs vmder 



156 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

whose orders it has momentarily been placed. All 
that is both beautiful and sad at the same time. 
Then, when the ferocity of the fighting had slack- 
ened a little, the cold came, with three or four 
nights of heavy frost, and against that new trial 
they have once more valiantly held their ground. 
Day and night we hear over our heads the hissing 
whistle of enormous shells flying towards Ypres, 
wicked, savage and incendiary. And the other day 
in crossing the city at dawn in order to get around 
here we saw the horrible devastation which nothing 
can justify and which nothing can ever excuse. 
Ah, what savages they are, but what redoubtable 
and terrible fighters ! When shall we "have them" 
for good! . . , 

Here are some passages from the letters 
of General X, commanding an army corps, 
who also writes from the front: 

October 20th. 
My confidence is complete. The struggle will be 
long, but we shall have entire success. ... I have 
spoken to you, I think, of that colonel, an oflScer 
of the Legion of Honour, who enlisted as an ordi- 
nary soldier at more than sixty years of age. I 
have in my corps a second lieutenant sixty-one 
years old whose son has been killed, and many 
other officers who are volunteers, who no longer 
owed any service to the army. At their side there 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 157 

are mere children, "the little warriors of France." 
Yesterday I saw a little chap of fourteen, dressed 
in uniform, marching proudly between two troop- 
ers. These children, in the costumes which have 
been gotten up for them, with their sabre-bayonets 
at their sides, look absurd, or rather they bring 
the tears to your eyes. It is eleven o'clock at 
night. I have just ordered an attack to take one 
of the enemy's positions which I have overwhelmed 
all day long with the fire of twenty batteries. 
Poor village! What devastation! So wills the 
safety of the country. But how happy those parts 
of the coimtry which are away from the field of 
operations should consider themselves. I have 
seen so many families fleeing and carrying away 
hurriedly pathetic bundles or carts loaded with 
clothes and all sorts of things. Ah, but this war 
is terrible. They bring into it an imbelievable 
ferocity, the result of the barbarism of these peo- 
ple who push their mania to the point of pretend- 
ing to arrogate to themselves the control of every- 
thing that thinks or works. But their tone and 
their attitude are changing; fortune no longer 
smiles on them; the ship is leaking. 

October 29th. 
I assure you that everybody from the most mod- 
est combatant to the Generalissimo will have a 
right to the victor's crown, for our successes are 
due to the bravery of these brave little troopers. 



158 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

They pass days and nights in the trenches within 
fifty yards of the enemy, exchanging shots continu- 
ously, or marching gaily to the assault and some- 
times falling without a complaint. 

I have just been to see an officer who was se- 
verely wounded. He was smiling. He said to 
me, "We've got that trench all right, haven't we. 
General.'' I told my comrades to avenge me. 
Good-bye, for a while." 

How can one help having confidence in such 
troops ! 

November 10th. 
Heaven knows if I ever expected a war like this, 
a regular mole trap. We have to fight not only 
against the enemy but against the cold. I try in 
a thousand difi'erent ways to keep my men in 
good health. What cares I have ! You must look 
after everything: hygiene, clothes, food, hospitals. 
It is a very great responsibility to lead troops into 
action. We take many precautions to avoid 
bronchitis, for we must not increase too much 
the number of your clients. Ah, if we could only 
call the nurses into the lines to carry away the 
wounded. But we are afraid of the shells and 
none of them must be allowed to show themselves 
around here. In order to harden our young sol- 
diers little by little, I keep them behind the lines 
in places where they have nothing to fear. I shall 
begin very soon to send them to the front. In 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 159 

that way we always have strong forces. Let us 
go forward, therefore, full of confidence. 

November 16th. 
You must spend yourself here like a vigorous 
young man. I can assure you that those who 
come out of this will have given proof of strong 
constitutions. In the first battle a shell burst two 
or three metres above my head, wounding two offi- 
cers of my staff and killing two horses. At other 
times they have burst in front or behind without 
doing any harm to those arovmd me. Three days 
ago it was infernal; they rained on us from every 
side. One single shell killed thirty-eight artillery 
horses. The men have been superb; they have 
stood undisturbed under this deluge of iron and 
fire. What brave fellows they are ! And it is 
touching to see how their hearts beat as one; how 
the French nation has gotten hold of itself again. 
In spite of all this anguish, truly this war is a 
"splendid ordeal." It will leave France strong 
and regenerated, as we all long for her to be. 



SISTER GABRIELLE'S CHRISTMAS 
TREE 

December 26th, 1914. — In these days of 
deep sorrow the unchangeable church in- 
vites us to celebrate, not the agony of Cal- 



l6o IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

vary, but the gay holiday of Christmas. 
What, celebrate that blessed holiday of in- 
timate pleasures and of sweet memories in 
these times of anxiety, of troubles and of 
cruel separation I Yes, Christmas is ever the 
same. Christmas which comes again in the 
shimmering starry night to recall to the earth 
that everlasting promise which through all 
the centuries since the dawn of the first 
Christmas day shall comfort every sorrow. 
That blessed word is everywhere. 

It was Christmas in those houses of 
mourning which gained an hour of respite 
from the thought that heaven, where now 
the souls of the well beloved are living, 
draws near to-day through the coming of the 
Child. 

It was Christmas in the trenches toward 
which our hearts were turned with such 
strength and fervour that a perfume of anx- 
ious tenderness must have floated that even- 
ing in the air of France around those be- 
loved soldiers. They had not our churches, 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL l6l 

alas, but above their heads in the broad, 
open sky their eyes could look for the shin- 
ing star. 

It was Christmas in all our hospitals and 
in Sister Gabrielle's ward. The evening of 
the 25th was spent around a splendid tree 
wonderfully decorated. A number of little 
girls, the nurses of to-morrow, full of the 
desire to make themselves useful but still too 
young to be admitted regularly to the hos- 
pital, had been working outside for their be- 
loved wounded. They brought us quantities 
of their own work and of the results of their 
collections. 

"Ah, those children," Sister Gabrielle said 
to me one day as she watched them leaving 
the hospital, carrying without the least em- 
barrassment huge bundles of red trousers 
to be mended, "those children without know- 
ing it are creating a new generation which 
will be moulded by life itself in its highest 
expression; by daily sacrifice, by living close 
to heroism, by the control and forgetful- 



l62 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

ness of self in the midst of unutterable emo- 
tion." 

The Sister was only too glad to let all 
that eager young life come to the ceremony 
of ''the tree." Happy and eager, they en- 
tered like the fresh spring into that long 
room where there was always suffering in 
spite of the holiday atmosphere. The smiles 
of the invalids followed them. At the very 
end of the room between the two rows of 
white beds stood the tree. It was a stately 
spruce sent from the mountains especially 
for our wounded. Its branches bent gently 
under the weight of numberless mysterious 
packages. Gold and silver stars glittered 
through the branches, along which flowed tri- 
colour ribbons, those beloved ribbons, tke 
sight of which brings tears to our eyes. In 
the middle at the very end of the two largest 
branches were fastened two French flags. 
When you touched the trunk the flags 
waved. You might have said that our 
spruce itself waved them at the ends of its 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 163 

outstretched arms for some mysterious sig- 
nal to those other flags which fly over our 
battlefields. At the very bottom, hidden 
among the thickest branches, a little, a very 
little plaster Christ Child, whom you had 
to look hard to find, slept sheltered by a 
mass of tri-colour ribbon. The child Jesus, 
with the three colours of France for its 
cradle, is that not something to dream 
about? 

As the evening fell, toward four o'clock, 
Sister Gabrielle ordered the long windows 
closed. Thereupon the many-coloured balls 
hung on the tree became alive and grew 
transparent and luminous. The dark green 
branches grew darker still and the red of our 
flags flamed out against them. Then the 
mysterious spirit of Christmas came down all 
around. It illuminated with its indefinable 
charm the presents hung on the table laden 
with mandarins and the traditional nougat, 
and indeed the whole atmosphere. Two or- 
derlies carried in on a cot the "darling" of 



164 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

the room, a little volunteer from Bar-le-duc, 
who answered proudly when he was com- 
plimented for his ardour, "But at home all 
the young men of eighteen have gone. You 
don't meet one in the town." 

To-day he is blushing and confused by 
the honour being done him, for it is he who 
is going to draw the numbers. They settle 
him as comfortably as possible with a chair 
on which to rest his wounded leg. All the 
men who are able to get up surround him, 
their heads bandaged, their arms in slings, 
limping along on crutches or the shoulder of 
a comrade. From the beds pathetic heads 
are raised in order to see better. The cere- 
monies begin. The system is very simple. 
The numbers contained in the bag corre- 
spond to the hospital numbers of the men 
and those whose numbers were first drawn 
choose first. From one end of the room to 
the other they went back and forth to de- 
scribe to those who were in bed the look, the 
size and the shape of the packages. After 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 165 

they have heard these details they consider, 
occasionally for a long time, and give their 
orders, which are immediately executed. 
The lucky ones who were on their feet, care- 
fully make the round of the tree, again and 
again, before deciding, as if it were a ques- 
tion of very serious moment. The pleas- 
ure of all these veterans was very touching. 
By a tender memory they found again that 
evening the feeling they had as children. A 
fictitious number marked with the name of 
the surgeon of the room suddenly came out. 
There just at that moment was Dr. X, gay 
and kind as always. The men feel great 
admiration and affection for him, which is 
well deserved, because his untiring devotion 
is as great as his scientific skill. He gra- 
ciously accepted a box of caramels and at 
his request one of the young girls passed it 
around the room. 

An adjutant whose bed was far away, 
claimed when his turn came, the honour of 
having one of the flags. Boisset confided to 



l66 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

me his satisfaction at being the last one 
called. "It's the least we can do, to give 
our dear wounded the first choice," he said. 
The directors of the hospital arrived in 
the midst of the distribution of the presents. 
Behind them we saw, to our great surprise, 
a little harmonium pushed by vigorous arms, 
and with it a whole choir of soldiers. Sis- 
ter Lucy, the accompanist, was summoned. 
She took her place; the uniforms were 
grouped around her white headdress and in 
front of the glowing tree we sang once more 
the old French carols. 

People, on your knees, await your 
deliverance. 

That command to hope and pray chanted 
by the fine, serious voice of a singer whose 
head was bandaged, awoke the far echoes of 
the room over which a tense and profound 
silence had spread. But as the songs fol- 
lowed one another we could hear from some 
of the beds, here and there, the sound of 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 167 

Stifled sobs. They are gay, really, our sim- 
ple old songs! But to-day their gaiety 
stirred in our hearts too many memories of 
past Christmases, from those which we cele- 
brated as children in the abandonment of 
careless happiness, to the later ones, even to 
that of last year. That one was perhaps 
made up of the happiness of other children, 
grown up around us; it was filled anyway 
with the inexpressible sweetness of home. 
Two of the invalids were affected in a par- 
ticularly harrowing way. It was because 
they suffered with an agony for which we 
shall never have pity enough. They came 
from the regions that have been invaded and 
they did not know what had become of their 
wives and children. The little girls, who 
were brought into the hospital room for the 
first time yesterday, were completely over- 
come by the tears of these men. They came 
to me to say, in a slightly horrified tone, 
that Sister Gabrielle had said that they 
should not try to comfort them. She would 



l68 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

talk to them herself later on, but she was 
sure, that for the time being, it was better 
to leave them alone. Sister Gabrielle was 
right. She knew well that at certain times 
there are griefs that cannot be comforted. 

During that day of respite when the se- 
vere rules of the hospital bowed before the 
gentle Christmas time, in front of that tree 
of memories, in that softening family atmos- 
phere, we could not but let them weep 
freely, these fathers, husbands and chil- 
dren who suddenly saw near them again 
the longed-for vision of their threat- 
ened homes. Ever since the manger at Beth- 
lehem no doubt men have wept at the feet 
of the new-born babe whose divine hand 
consoles and lifts up sorrowing hearts. No, 
we must say nothing. No one should try to 
come between human sorrow and the child 
who is to suffer on the cross, for since that 
night the bond is beyond our understanding. 
Let the very tears of our soldiers help us 
pray for those dreadful troubles that we see 



IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 169 

and for the other more hidden ones which 
weigh on our souls. To-morrow when the 
great windows open again to the cold air 
of December we shall take up once more 
with greater courage after to-day's tears, our 
customary life and our self-control. To- 
morrow, Sister Gabrielle, who has seemed to 
see nothing, will remember, as if by a 
miracle, those beds where so many tears 
have been shed. She will bend those quiver- 
ing white wings over them for a few mo- 
ments and will say words of strength and 
consolation. To-morrow the blessed Christ- 
mas day will be over, of course, but the tree 
stripped of its garlands and presents, will 
still hold the tri-colour ribbons and also hid- 
den in its lowest branches, the divine child, 
who stretches out his arms. Sister Gabrielle 
still has that silent and eloquent sermon; 
the child of sacrifice under the colours of 
that France for which we must be ready to 
give all and even to die; that is what she 
leaves before the eyes of the soldiers. 



170 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 

But their thoughts and ours also can rise 
beyond, even higher than the hardships of 
the stable and of the present moment. This 
Jesus who smiles in the straw of the manger 
and who is willing through love to become 
the God of the Crucifixion, is also the God 
of the Resurrection. The feast of His com- 
ing has given to humanity a radiant thought. 
To truly celebrate that anniversary we must 
know how to hear beyond the days of sad- 
ness the distant Alleluia. The true Christ- 
mas of Christian souls is at all times the 
feast of hope. 



THE END 



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